Ohio Charter Improvements, Education Politics In CA, NYC, And Elsewhere. Baltimore! The View From The Sidelines. Plus, Pre-K, Teacher Testing, Opt-Out, Microaggressions, Teach To One, And Low-Cost Privates. More NAEP! These Bears Won’t Leave.

Bellwether made a series of recommendations for an Ohio charter law overhaul, most found their way into the law. And it’s working. We can do this for your state, too! And you know who you are…(pdf)

Tight primary race in CA with education implications. Rep. Honda is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet in politics but his likely opponent (they’re both Democrats, California has different rules) is more of an education reformer. Expect teachers unions to play heavy on this one.

If you think the debate over teacher testing here is rough, then check this out. Here are two takes on the debate over opt-out.

In New York people are catching on that Mayor de Blasio doesn’t like charter schools:

He acknowledged that there is a widely held belief — apparently even among pre-teens — that his administration is an enemy of local charter sector. Now his administration is trying to reverse what de Blasio characterized as an unfair stereotype.

As it turns out he may only be opposed to charter schools run by Eva Moskowitz. So at least we know it’s not political.

Some education discussion in this Atlantic article on the role of intelligence.  Sara Mead call your office, because this is how intelligent people talk about pre-K policy.

A Kansas school district wants to suspend students for “microaggressions.” Cue the lawyers. It’s well-established that students and teachers enjoy diminished free-speech rights in schools but they don’t forfeit all of them. And given the French Revolution quality of the microaggression conversation right now this seems like (a) a recipe for agenda-driven conflict and (b) an almost surefire way to turn what might have been teachable moments to help students learn into legalized conflicts.

The Alaska ESSA situation. As predicted, Baltimore underwhelms. Remember the big landmark labor deal? No one talks about that now…Surely someone must still have the talking points?

Here’s a look at one lower-priced private school that’s opened in Washington, D.C. I’m surprised this idea has not gotten more attention. This is not the only school like this. There is a for-profit dimension to this particular story but more generally low-cost privates (for-and non-profit) seem like a potentially greater disruption to comfortable suburban schools than charters – because it’s harder to fight them off at the state capital.

Also, Teach to One and the leading edge of personalized learning.*

Cami Anderson on service and schools.  Melanie Brooks on the dysfunction plaguing youth sports. You do see/hear some crazy stuff on the sidelines…

In New York City, more year over year renewal on mayoral control.  The Chronicle of Higher Education turns their attention to Trump. Don’t miss the syllabus.

So I can get the back and forth with Tom Loveless and Checker Finn over NAEP levels and the basic disagreement there. And reasonable people can disagree because although you wouldn’t know it from all the rhetoric and certainty academic standards are just constructs, there is no absolute truth about what a 4th-grader ought to know. But, this Common Core sorta conspiracy theory from Ze’ev Wurman baffles me. Is the problem with Common Core that it’s too rigorous or not rigorous enough? Both? People do argue both. I guess Ze’ev is arguing they’re not rigorous enough but he also argues, like Loveless, that NAEP is unrealistic.

Here’s a nice Father’s Day story.

 This town was taken over by bears. 

*New Classrooms is a past Bellwether client.

One Reply to “Ohio Charter Improvements, Education Politics In CA, NYC, And Elsewhere. Baltimore! The View From The Sidelines. Plus, Pre-K, Teacher Testing, Opt-Out, Microaggressions, Teach To One, And Low-Cost Privates. More NAEP! These Bears Won’t Leave.”

  1. Re: the debate over opt-out: Lower achieving pupils in schools and districts that want to purchase standardized tests informing their parents about how well their children are achieving state standards are free to do so; their advocates, such as Jonah Edelman, are wrong to force their test-prep-focused approach to education upon the entire country through their lobbying Congress when ESEA is being renewed, and therefore families should continue to opt out of test-dominated state schooling until the educational maladministration of President Obama is brought to an end by Congress rewriting ESEA to remove the failed annual testing mandate of George W. Bush in its entirety. Consistent with this, Alaska should lead other states by taking a bold stand against the federal testing mandate, foregoing the benefits of more detailed information that, despite its existence, has not resulted in closing the achievement gap among different ethnicities within the United States nor that between our country as a whole and leading educational jurisdictions overseas, whom Americans have fallen still further behind while pursuing the failed strategy that EdCentral’s Abigail Swisher wants to continue with.

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