“Tenure” is such a flashpoint in K-12 that it’s easy to forget that it’s really a higher education issue.  This week’s School of Thought column at TIME takes a look at the debate over tenure and asks whether it’s not time to mend it rather than end it.

These days tenure for teachers is such a brawl in America’s elementary and secondary schools that it’s easy to forget that it’s more a cornerstone of higher education. When Austan Goolsbee, Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, announced earlier this month that he was leaving the White House to return to the University of Chicago it was a reminder just how strong the ties — and inducements — of university tenure can be, and why it has recently come under fire.

At colleges and universities, tenure basically bestows a job for life unless an institution runs out of money. Originally intended to shield professors from meddling by college administrators, donors or politicians, tenure has evolved into one of the most coveted perks in higher education. It signals excellence and it confers employment stability.

Critics of tenure contend it has outlived its usefulness and is a poor fit for the modern university. Supporters counter that the intellectual independence it confers is essential to a culture of inquiry.

You don’t need tenure, or even a job at all, to read the entire column right here for free.

Richard Whitmire takes a look at the vitriol in the education debate. He’s right, of course, about the rhetoric and tone.  But, how much of that is edu-specific and how much just a reflection of the times we’re living in. You may have noticed that education is not an outlier in otherwise civil debates about public policies.  And, how much of all this is a natural byproduct of social change?

Today about 8 percent of low-income kids can expect to earn a college degree by the time they’re 24 – a figure that is actually lower in some American cities.  And high school dropout rates for black and Hispanic students are, on average, around 40 percent – and far worse in many urban and rural communities.  That’s a catastrophic problem perpetuated by an incredibly powerful and durable set of political and stakeholder arrangements that are now under unprecedented scrutiny.  So, given the history of social change in this country, it’s also worth asking if we’re going to see major changes without a lot of contention?

Not saying we can’t do better, only that we should also be realistic.

Update: He’s everywhere!  Whitmire and RiShawn Biddle in today’s USAT.

Late to this, good David Leonhardt column on college.  My take on the same debate here. And here’s public agenda with some brand new survey data on college (pdf).

Kristina Rizga takes a look at teacher evaluation state of play.  She notes that there is no consensus about how much to use test scores.  But there is a consensus that teachers shouldn’t be evaluated on test scores alone.  That doesn’t stop people in the story from declaring that they don’t think teachers should be evaluated on test scores alone. OK, but since everyone agrees and no state is doing that at some point can we stop holding that straw man up?

Great pinots, solid fly fishing, good mountains and now ed reform: Here’s what went down in Oregon.

Insiders say things may be slowing down in Charlotte. And David Griffith reports on the fog of Core….

Today’s NYT has a look at the new teacher evaluation system in D.C. Three things jump out.

Landscape. The headline is “Pass or Be Fired.”  But, while that is the choice in some places – and teacher are understandably resentful –  is that really the choice in D.C.?  The evaluation system is part of a revised compensation that offers teachers the chance to earn substantially more for performance, challenging assignments, and so forth.  So the overall deal is more – demand more and pay more – than just pass or lose your job.

Context. This passage is interesting.  ““I’m 25 years in the system, and before, I always got outstanding ratings,” she said. “How can you go overnight from outstanding to minimally effective?”” Good question!  Perhaps this is where you key readers in that everyone was rated outstanding before yet somehow the kids were not learning very much?  It’s not a theoretical question, there is data on multiple school systems and this is why as part of the 2009 Recovery Act the feds started collecting data on evaluation outcomes.

Process. In education we always fight about process…Here’s the kicker:

“Some teachers feel the master educators are out to get them.” That is a common perception, said Mark Simon, an education analyst for the Economic Policy Institute, which receives teachers’ union financing. Ms. Rhee developed the system, he noted, during tough contract negotiations and did not consult with the teachers’ union in its design. “That was a missed opportunity,” Mr. Simon said, “and it’s created a lot of resentment.”

Well, the union did ratify the contract that included all this –including decoupling evaluation from the contract. They did so overwhelmingly it should be noted.  Might also be good to note that Simon was a teachers union leader, leader as in president, of the union right next door to D.C. in Montgomery County.  There is some sibling rivalry here…especially around the issue of “collaboration.” But all that not withstanding, at what point should we just start looking at the evaluation system on its merits (certain aspects of which are debatable it should be noted)?

Here’s today’s decision in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants (pdf).

PR lessons from Baltimore. Here’s my take on the larger issues from a few months ago.

That should be the title of this Joel Klein blog post.

The Economist with a sharp take on the NAACP – UFT charter school lawsuit in New York City. Just in case you were not entirely convinced this is political the article notes that the most popular schools are coming off the list…that just compounds the unfairness here…

This week’s School of Thought column @TIME takes a look at budget cuts and some questions parents might want answered and how to make heads and tails of budget cut rhetoric:

The slow pace of America’s economic recovery means many states are still hurting financially. As many as 15 states still can’t agree on a budget, and that’s a problem, because in many states the fiscal year begins next month.

Parents are understandably anxious about what this all means for the upcoming school year. And they should be. An analysis released earlier this month by the National Governors Association and National Association of State Budget Officers found that 16 states are planning cuts for next year, following 18 that made extra cuts midway through last year. And that’s before cuts at the local level. So even though fear about the education budget axe never matches the reality, there will be real sacrifices in some states and communities and, overall, spending remains below what it was just a few years ago.

Unfortunately school districts and states are more tight-fisted about sharing information than they are about spending money. And too often budget cuts are based more on what’s easiest for the adults in charge of the schools rather than the kids in them. So here are 5 things parents should know — or ask — about the spending decisions and how they will impact schools next fall…

Good news: Times may be tight but you can read the entire column for free right here via this link.

After almost two years working on teacher evaluation Delaware is asking for (and word is getting from the Department of Education) an extra year to wait on implementing its teacher evaluation system under Race to the Top.  Illustrative on two levels:

First, despite all the rhetoric about test scores and teachers, test scores only compromise 20 percent of the Delaware evaluation system, the remainder is observational. But don’t let that stop anyone from making wild claims about how all teachers are being evaluated just based on test scores.  Second, this shows just how tough Race to the Top implementation is going – even in the very best states like DE.  That has big implications for the outcome of the RTT initiative, and more immediately is it going to open the gates for a flood of requests?

Update: A lot of concern about the precedent here but also concern from key DE groups about the impact there.

A hint of bipartisanship and reform?  Over at New Schools Ben Riley – a big proponent of the idea – writes-up  the GREAT Act, which is aimed at improving teacher and principal training (and includes an emphasis on rural and Native American students). The bill builds on some successful initiatives, focuses on results, and would also help introduce some much needed competition into teacher training.  Introduced by Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat, is also has Democratic Senators Landrieu and Mikulski as original cosponsors.  But Republican senators Alexander and Kirk are on board, too.

Here’s a little more on the recent ed policy action in Illinois via an Ed Week commentary by some of the players. And Fordham takes a look at how charter schools handle pension benefits.

IDEA Public Schools in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley is seeking a director of professional development and a district director of college counseling.

Detroit launches a Recovery School Sistrict-like arrangement. Hard to miss that approach as an emerging trend.  Prepare to debunk! Elsewhere:

CCSSO launches its new accountability framework. Meanwhile, California seems to be moving the other way by turning a blind eye to data. Glassdoor.com ranks Teach For America among the toughest job interviews in the country at #7. New CRPE report on charter schools, portfolio approaches, and the achievement gap.

And some promising results from the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program, an effort to help dropouts get back on track.

Charlie Barone takes an important look at waiver issue. On the same issue Margaret Spellings goes sweat hog.

Red State’s Erick Erickson attacks Checker Finn and Fordham for being leftists… It’s really getting to be French Revolution time over there on the right.

Below is my take on the proposed “plan B” of waivers, check out David DeSchryver’s view: “backfire” and “pissed off” among the other phrases.  RiShawn Biddle goes even further.

And don’t miss this new TNTP guide to smart implementation of changes to teacher evaluation systems.

In this week’s School of Thought column at TIME.com I take a look at reaction to the administration’s idea for “Plan B” to reauthorize No Child through regulations.  It landed with a thud and unless it spurs some action precisely because no one likes it, it’s pretty risky:

Is it finally the beginning of the end for No Child Left Behind?

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced late last week that if Congress does not overhaul the ten-year old federal education law known as No Child Left Behind in the next few months, he will do it himself. His plan? To give states waivers from some of the law’s provisions in exchange for a commitment to undertake a currently unspecified set of reforms. Immediately dubbed “Plan B” by the Secretary and others, the announcement was not a surprise. Using regulations to amend the law, which is years overdue to be revised, has been under consideration for months. Still, the reaction to Duncan’s announcement highlighted why Congress is having such a hard time fixing the law in the first place…

You don’t need any waiver to read the entire column here.

Two at Hope Street Group working on education: Deputy Director for Education and an education policy analyst.

The new NAEP history scores are no great shakes (although I don’t pay very much attention to 12th-grade scores) but they’re also hardly as awful as they’re being played.  And shouldn’t we be happy that African-American and Hispanic kids are making progress even if the gaps do remain frustratingly stubborn?

Instead, the results are being turned into some sort of referendum on No Child Left Behind (even though history teaching was problematic long before 2001 and the results don’t really support that claim anyway). Most amazing, it’s almost as if people are cheering and hoping for bad news. In fact, the very folks who used to complain that the media only focused on the bad news about public schools are now the very ones declaring everything is bad news! Yesterday’s scores could have been a lot better, sure, but there were some rays of hope in there, too.

Matt Candler has an eye toward transforming education in the southeast.  Here’s one thing he’s up to.

Via this Facebook page you can help schools and teachers in Joplin, MO get ready for the next school year in the wake of the tornadoes there.

Arne Duncan tells The Times that he’s starting to think about a big package of No Child Left Behind waivers (called “plan B”) because Congress isn’t acting. Ignore the overheated rhetoric neither the lack of action on NCLB or the waivers on the horizon are a big surprise.

Two distinct issues here though: Turf and policy.  There is always some opposition to a move like this because even though the law clearly gives Duncan (and his predecessors who used waivers as well) the authority to make a variety of waivers, and waivers are pretty commonplace in a host of policy domains, Congress doesn’t like being preempted – and there is, of course, a natural tension between two co-equal branches of government.  But there are also a host of policy issues at play in this specific instance.  All NCLB waivers are not created equal and this DFER blog post for a few months ago is well-worth checking out for more on that. Bottom line: A lot of the obvious stuff has already been waived or rendered moot by other changes and there is a disconnect between the rhetoric and the facts on the ground (eg #s of schools not making “adequate yearly progress” was only 38 percent last year, hardly an unreasonable number), so the administration is going to find itself performing a real high wire act here to balance political pressure with maintaining a focus on accountability for underserved students.

In the WaPo Joel Klein rolls up changing personnel and a changing ethos in public education. The nut:

So what drives this new generation of reformers? In contrast to the unions, bureaucrats and other predictable apologists for the failed status quo, they believe our schools can do a whole lot better than they are doing, especially for poor kids growing up in challenged families. Sure, educating children from difficult circumstances is often much harder, but the notion that schools can get much better results with those same kids than they’re now generally getting is no longer a matter of abstract debate. It’s now established fact.

Chicago Trib looks at the backstory on the passage of the recent reform legislation in Illinois. (Disc – Highlights SFC, a Bellwether client).

And I’d like to be able to report that the new American Educator is 100 percent Finland free, but of course it’s not.*  Still well worth checking out this issue – a couple of great articles.

*Update: Wolverine fans are already sending emails that it’s not U of M free, rather it’s loaded up.

Incoming 2011 – 2012 TFA Corps is 5,200.  More here.

New ERS report on stranded resources and reallocation is worth your time. They’re doing a lot of work around the country on this issue. And obviously timely given the fiscal situation.

This commentary in Education Week about how educators should become political animals is interesting on two levels.  First, best I can tell it’s only the 12th time the world “zebra” has appeared in Ed Week.   But second, it doesn’t quite add up and seems to have the landscape almost exactly backwards.  Education interests are political animals, they don’t need to become them.  The two largest teachers unions, for instance, are not only the biggest spenders in education politics, they’re among the very biggest spenders in all of American politics.  At the local level educators are enormously influential in politics, too.  Check out a school board race sometime. All that money and influence isn’t always effective in achieving its goals (though it often is), this is politics after all, but it’s there nonetheless.

If anything – to torture the piece’s animal kingdom analogy a little further – there is a new invasive species that is shaking things up: The current crop of reform groups at the local, state, and national level. But those groups are coming into an environment that is already a highly political system.

Stand for Children is looking for a national policy director. Great opportunity in national policy advocacy.  And a new statewide education organization in Connecticut is seeking an ED.

Is there a charter school backlash?  Recent events in places like Georgia, New York City and Rhode Island make you wonder.  And if so, why and what to do about it?  Hint:  Don’t do what Ohio’s considering doing.  Those are the questions and issues that this week’s School of Thought column @TIME.com takes a look at.

Is it the best of times or end times for public charter schools? 4,000 charter school leaders, teachers, advocates, and policymakers will gather in Atlanta later this month at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools’ annual conference. The gathering of upstarts is now larger than many long-standing traditional education groups can muster, but in states and cities across the country, charter schools are facing increased political pressure and scrutiny. In Georgia, the state’s supreme court just ruled that the arrangements for charter schools are unconstitutional. Welcome to town!

Read the entire column via this link.

In the NYT Michael Winerip praises teacher peer review in Montgomery County, Maryland.  In The Washington Post Michael Chandler takes a look at the state of Maryland’s struggle to design a teacher evaluation system as part of its Race to the Top plan.  Sounds easy.  Why doesn’t the state just copy Montgomery County?

Short answer: Because Winerip puts the glossiest spin on the numbers that you can.  Peer review is fine insofar as it goes but it’s not a comprehensive solution.  Here are the numbers across several districts. What they show, overall, and what union leaders and district officials say (when not doing PR) is that peer review is pretty good at addressing observably poor teaching.  Teachers who can’t manage a classroom, organize a lesson, work through material sequentially, engage with the material themselves, or worse can’t regularly get to school on time or in a condition to teach.  These are, of course, a minority of teachers but when you’re talking about 3 million and the scale of hiring in larger districts these are all real issues.  And that’s reflected in the data on peer review.

But what peer review doesn’t get at is the real problem the field faces:  Unobservable poor instruction.  And that’s why districts and states across the country are trying to come up with better measures of effective teaching and why – when used responsibly – test scores can tell you something, too, and are one  necessary ingredient in the mix.  Realistically these news measures will have problems and there will be failure along the way.  Just for example, it’s  worth questioning whether statewide systems are really the way to go and where the best places to invest resources and energy are – in tools or training?  But the bottom line is that we need this learning process and we need new methods because even in places like Montgomery County the overall averages obscure some very real problems – problems that are even more acute for students in many other places.  There are a lot of reasons for our poor school outcomes today, but this is one of them.

There are plenty of toss-ups in education policy – places where people can read the evidence and facts and come to different conclusions about what to do next.  Whether it make sense to allow Achievement First to expand its schools in Rhode Island – where the mayor of Cranston wants to bring them and where they would be schools of choice for parents – is not one of them. AF schools have demonstrated solid results, the “mayoral academy” idea pioneered by Cumberland Mayor McKee is a solid policy innovation, all that’s left to argue about is politics.