Affirmative Action Survives Fisher But Justice Kahlenberg Dissents! Former Political Hostage Chris Christie’s School Finance Plan Is Awful, So Is The Emerging CA Teacher Bill. Pensions, Law, School Zoning, And Common Core! 10 Percent Is Good Enough! Jack Coons, Shavar Jefferies, And Smarick Is A Closet Third Wayer. Plus Bears On Two Feet!

Let’s hope that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s new school finance proposal is some sort of opening gambit for a reasoned negotiation, because it’s a terrible idea. New Jersey’s urban districts are a train wreck but this is not how you fix them. Maybe Trump can just take him hostage again? Or maybe that’s how this got started – it sure seems political. Perhaps it was a condition of his release?

California deal on teacher personnel rules is falling apart. Hard to go broke betting on that.  Also from California, turns out teacher turnover is not a big deal (pdf). At least if that’s what you have to say to knock down Chad Aldeman’s analysis about how the current structure of teacher pensions is lousy retirement policy.

Supreme Court ruled today in Fisher (pdf):

The race-conscious admissions program in use at the time of petitioner’s application is lawful under the Equal Protection Clause.

Note the dissent of Justice Kahlenberg, hearing this from a few folks today including Jack Kent Cooke Foundation:

Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and self-described progressive, believes that the decision could hurt the prospects of low-income students, who are underrepresented on the nation’s campuses. By allowing the continued use of race as a factor in admissions, he argues, the court has discouraged colleges from finding other ways to promote diversity — such as through preferences for students who are poor.

Focusing solely on race means that colleges now admit students of many races who are mostly affluent, Kahlenberg said: Students from the richest quarter of the population outnumber students from the poorest quarter by 24 to 1, he said.

“Today’s decision seems to give universities more leeway to simply use race as a way to get racial diversity and ignore economically disadvantaged students,” he said. “If the decision had gone the other way, constraining the use of race, it would have led universities to address racial diversity via economic disadvantage — and now that’s less likely to happen.”

Remember that education should be more like law! People keep saying that anyway. It makes the recovering lawyers who work at Bellwether smile.

Pace this Times story, you should be a lot more concerned about uncertified teachers being hired if there was evidence that traditional certification improved outcomes. There’s not. In fact, there is evidence from New York on that exact point!

When progressives aren’t: School zoning.

Fordham with a survey of teachers about Common Core math.

Here’s an article about whether public schools are broken or not. It argues no. Heckuva job! This is a genre of writing that appeals to big think types and you really can’t go wrong whether you say there is a big crisis or no crisis. Plus, you can argue about it all day. But really? Sure, the narrative of the rise and then fall of American public education doesn’t survive close scrutiny and there is a lot of bad history floating around being weaponized at this conference or that one. And yes, there has been progress and is progress now. Just scroll down this page for some evidence of that with various things. But, right now about one in ten low-income kids get a bachelor’s degree by 24. For their more affluent peers that figure is 6x more. There’s plenty of other data in the same vein. So it does kinda seems like a system that’s not working very well, at least if you care about social and economic mobility. I mean, seriously, that sucks. Who really wants to defend it even if means you get published in The Atlantic? People are working hard, people are well-intentioned, the problems are systemic. But still…surely this country can do better?

But on the other hand, no wait, nevermind.

Democrats for Education Reform’s Shavar Jefferies on Democratic platform priorities.

Jack Coons is remarkable. So read this!  Dan Quisenberry on hope for Detroit schools. Andy Smarick on a third way on choice and governance.

Give Washington, D.C. area parents what they want! Otherwise they will go straight to the feds and the media.

Pedals the bear is back!

2 Replies to “Affirmative Action Survives Fisher But Justice Kahlenberg Dissents! Former Political Hostage Chris Christie’s School Finance Plan Is Awful, So Is The Emerging CA Teacher Bill. Pensions, Law, School Zoning, And Common Core! 10 Percent Is Good Enough! Jack Coons, Shavar Jefferies, And Smarick Is A Closet Third Wayer. Plus Bears On Two Feet!”

  1. Rick Kahlenberg is right: today’s Supreme Court decision leaves in place a chimerical, arbitrary, inexplicable admission system that reinforces the present prevailing American university culture of discriminating against people based on the colour of their skin, rather than the content of their character. The racial obsession of the many X-generation and younger denizens on university campuses today distracts from their institutional mission of increasing and disseminating knowledge and wisdom, and as the quality of the student bodies at institutions like the University of Texas declines, which is predictable based on current university policies, so too should the reputations and taxpayer support of such institutions, which should be boycotted by students, families, and alumni that value the world-serving academic mission of universities over this inadequate, establishment approach to national social rebalancing.

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