A few months ago I wrote a column for TIME asking who is qualified to run a school system and saying the verdict is out on Cathie Black.  Well, jury’s back.  And the answer is apparently no.

Josh Greeman’s take on all this is worth-reading although I think this is more an unforced error for Mayor Bloomberg than an error overall.  And even with Easter coming late this year you gotta give Fordham’s Mike Petrilli some props for predicting last winter that Black would be gone by Easter.

My sense was that Black just never quite liked schools or school people and that’s a key aspect of the job and vital to doing it well.  Even Joel Klein’s critics acknowledged how much he cared about the work and the people (adults and kids).  You never got that vibe with Black.

Also, NYC’s John White is off to New Orleans to run the school system there, good for them and good for him.  And David Steiner, NY’s state education commissioner, announced today he’s heading back to private life later in the year.

Update: Worth mentioning the obvious, on the commissioner job the ideal candidate is already in Albany – current Deputy Commissioner John King.

This week’s School of Thought at TIME revisits an issue I’ve written about before, a pretty good model for helping at-risk students on college campuses already is in use on college campuses – in the athletic department. College athletics have their problems – and calls to keep programs with low graduation rates out of the NCAA tournament and college bowls make a lot of sense – but they offer a good model for supporting students

When the University of Connecticut beat Butler on Monday night to win the NCAA championship, they brought down the curtain on an unusually exciting men’s college basketball tournament. But one aspect of the tournament was entirely predictable: The handwringing about the low-graduation rates for many basketball programs. While graduation rates for student athletes are improving, poor outcomes remain a serious problem. In this year’s tournament, only 42 of the 68 teams graduated at least 60 percent of their players, according to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida. The winning Connecticut Huskies have a 31 percent graduation rate for basketball players…

…While college athletic programs have their share of problems, they also offer some ideas about how to improve college completion—especially among those who are the first in their families to attend college.

Read the entire thing here.

Rick Hess sometimes goes off half-cocked but his warnings in this blog post are well worth heeding.

ProPublica takes a look at educational management companies (EMOs). It’s worth reading but a basic analytic error at the top is going to leave readers with a distorted view of the landscape and the whole piece is more blunt force trauma than nuance, which seems like a missed opportunity.  The article, which focuses on for-profit management companies, notes that,  “Contrary to the idea of charters as small, locally run schools, approximately a third of them now rely on management companies to perform many of the most fundamental school services, such as hiring and firing staff, developing curricula and disciplining students.”

Roughly true (the figure may be a little less than that), but only about 13 percent (of the total number of charters nationally) are for-profit management companies.  The rest are non-profit networks of schools.  They’re not all great, either, but on average have a different performance picture.  And a network like Uncommon Schools, KIPP, Aspire, or Achievement First really has nothing in common (eg not tax status, not operating norms, not performance) with White Hat Management – an overall low-performing EMO highlighted by the story.  So it’s useful to differentiate.

To be clear, the point here is not that there are not quality problems (bonus double negative!) but rather that the landscape is more diverse both in terms of for-profit/non-profit and also performance than the story lets on.  For instance, the article highlights a lawsuit against National Heritage Academies but doesn’t note that some of the very best performing schools in Michigan (where NHA has a heavy presence) are NHA schools as well.

Bottom line: When it comes to charter schools, or all schools for that matter, look beneath the label. ProPublica does great work but it’s shame they didn’t do that here because this is an important issue.

If you follow the pensions issue be sure to check out this ES interview with pension attorney Stephen Pincus.

Voting is open for the next TIME 100 List. Some education names on it (Rhee, Canada, etc…) plus some names involved in education among other pursuits (Guggenheim, Booker, Hastings, etc…).

Senators Bennet (D-CO) and Cochran (R-MS) have introduced legislation to fix the “comparability” loophole in Title I. Rep. Fattah (D-PA) has the companion bill in the House.  That’s quite a line-up.  This is one of these tweaks that has big consequences and matters and also an issue that usually gets killed in the back room when ESEA is being finalized so keep an eye out this time as that legislation moves forward.

Two stories from last week that will have legs going forward and are worth keeping an eye on:

Cheating in D.C.  schools.  This story seems likely to have some twists and turns and it seems like there is more to come.  Smoke, fire, all that.

The Gary Miron “study” on KIPP from Western Michigan University (pdf). As a rule, when a “study” is shared with the schools being studied after it’s already been circulated to reporters you should be leery. These issues are complicated so common – and understandable – mistakes, for instance conflating or mixing-up capital and operating expenses are easily addressed through a review process – before a study is released. More generally, as Brian Gill (Mathematica) and Robin Lake (who has herself raised questions about KIPP) have pointed out a lot of this report is “apples to watermelons” comparisons and KIPP’s own response is a good overview (pdf). That’s less understandable. But the issue to keep an eye on is whether some easily-fooled reporters should have been more skeptical and asked some obvious questions they apparently did not.  Stay tuned.

Cowen Institute in New Orleans is hiring. And the Charter School Growth Fund needs an investment analyst.

Hot rumor in Boston today at HFSR is that apparently Stanford’s Terry Moe is going to work at AFT on choice and contract issues as a senior fellow and consultant.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about last in/first out policies for layoffs.  And you know, when you really stop to think about it and listen to the reasonable voices it does make a lot of sense for organizations that are fundamentally about quality teaching to make personnel decisions with no attention to how good someone is at teaching.  So please disregard all earlier posts on last in/first out.