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2007 Winner, Editor's Choice Best Education Blog
-- Performancing.com

2006 Winner, Best K-12 Administration Blog -- "Best of the Education Blog Awards"
-- eSchool News and Discovery Education

2006 Finalist, Best Education Blog
-- Weblog Awards

Least influential of education's most influential information sources.
-- Education Week Research Center

"unexpectedly entertaining"..."tackle[s] a potentially mindfogging subject with cutting clarity... they're reading those mushy, brain-numbing education stories so you don't have to!"
-- Slate's Mickey Kaus

"a very smart blog... [if] you're trying to separate the demagogic attacks on NCLB from the serious criticism, this is the site to read"
-- The New Republic's Ryan Lizza

"everyone who's anyone reads Eduwonk"
-- Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media's Richard Colvin

"full of very lively short items and is always on top of the news...He gets extra points for skewering my high school rating system"
-- Jay Mathews, The Washington Post

"a daily dose of information from the education policy world, blended with a shot of attitude and a dash of humor"
-- Education Week

"designed to cut through the fog and direct specialists and non-specialists alike to the center of the liveliest and most politically relevant debates on the future of our schools"
-- The New Dem Daily

"peppered with smart and witty comments on the education news of the day"
-- Education Gadfly

"don't hate Eduwonk cuz it's so good"
-- Alexander Russo, This Week In Education

"the morning's first stop for education bomb-throwers everywhere"
-- Mike Antonucci, Intercepts

"…the big dog on the ed policy blog-ck…"
-- Michele McLaughlin, AFT Blog

"I check Eduwonk several times a day, especially since I cut back on caffeine"
-- Joe Williams, fallen journalist, Executive Director, Democrats for Education Reform

"...one of the few bloggers who isn't completely nuts"
-- Mike Petrilli, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation

"I have just three 'go to' websites: The Texas Legislature, Texas Longhorn sports, and Eduwonk"
-- Sandy Kress, former education advisor to President Bush and former chairman, Dallas Board of Education

"penetrating analysis in a lively style on a wide range of issues"
-- Walt Gardner, champion letter-to-the-editor writer and retired teacher

"thugs"
-- Susan Ohanian

Education News and Analysis

American Educator
Chronicle of Higher Education
EducationNews.org
Education Next
Education Week
eSchool News
Inside Higher Ed
Jay Mathews' Class Struggle
Phi Delta Kappan
New York Times Education
School Wise Press
Stateline.org
Teacher Magazine

Policy and Political Blogs

The American Scene
Andrew Sullivan.com
Bloggingheads
Booker Rising
The Corner
Daniel Drezner
Dangerous Thoughts
The Democratic Strategist
Foresight
The Has Been
Huffington Post
Instapundit.com
Kausfiles.com
Loose Cannon
Matthew Yglesias
Mojo
Oxblog
The Plank (TNR)
Political Animal (Washington Monthly)
The Politico
Post Global
Real Clear Politics
Scotusblog
Taking Note
Talkingpointsmemo.com
Tank'd
Tapped
Think Tank Town
Volokh Conspiracy
WSJ's Blog Federation
Washington Whispers

EduReading


Collective Bargaining in Education: Negotiating Change in Today's Schools

Edited by Jane Hannaway and Andrew J. Rotherham


Why Newsweek's List of America's 100 Best High Schools Doesn't Make the Grade

By Andrew J. Rotherham
and Sara Mead

A Qualified Teacher
in Every Classroom

Edited by Frederick M. Hess, Andrew J. Rotherham,
and Kate Walsh

America's Teaching Crisis

By Jason Kamras and Andrew J. Rotherham

Rethinking Special Education For A New Century

Edited by Chester E. Finn, Jr., Andrew J. Rotherham
& Charles R. Hokanson, Jr.

Making The Cut: How States Set Passing Scores on Standardized Tests

By Andrew J. Rotherham

Education Blogs

A Constrained Vision
Andrew Pass
a schoolyard blog
ASCD
Assorted Stuff
Mr. B-G's English Blog
Barnett Berry
Bill Jackson's Education Blog
Bridging Differences (Meier and Ravitch)
Bulletin Board (NASBE)
Campaign K-12 (Ed Week)
Chaos Theory
Charter Blog (NAPCS)
Charter School Policy Inst. Blog
Chez Dormont
Chris Correa
Class Context
The College Puzzle
College Ready Blog (Athens Learning Group)
The Common School
Conversation Starters
Core Knowledge Blog
Critical Mass
Dangerously Irrelevant
Daryl Cobranchi
Dave Shearon
Dave Saba (ABCTE)
DC Education Blog
D-EDreckoning
Dems for Education Reform
The Deputy Head
Early Ed Watch
Early Stories
edbizbuzz
EdPol
Edspresso
Educated Nation
Educating One Mind
The Education Network
The Education Wonks
EduFlack
Eduoptimists
EdWahoo
Eduwonkette
Edwize (UFT)
Eponymous Educator
Essential Blog
Extra Credit
Flypaper (Fordham)
Fordham Fellows
From The Trenches
The Gadfly
Get On The Bus (Dayton Daily News)
Get Schooled (AJC)
The Gradebook (St. Pete Times)
Grumpy Professor
The Hall Monitor
Higher Ed Watch
Hip Teacher
I Thought A Think
IALA
In Other News (Ed Week)
Inside Pre-K
Instructivist
Intercepts
IvyGate
Jay Greene
Jenny D.
Joannejacobs.com
John Merrow
K-12 Hotlinks
Kindling Flames
Kitchen Table Math
Learning Now (PBS)
The Life That Chose Me
Mathew K. Tabor
Media Infusion
Ms. Frizzle
Moving At The Speed Of Creativity
NCLB Act II (Ed Week)
NCLBlog (AFT)
Newoldschoolteacher
NSBA's BoardBuzz
NYC Educator
Paper Trail (USN)
ParaNews (NCP)
Parentalcation
Paul Baker
Pedablogue
The Portable Princess
The PrincipalsPage
Principal's Policy Blog (NASSP)
Quasi Dictum
Roy Romer
Running on Empty
School of Blog
School Zone (MJS)
Schools for Tomorrow
Science After School
SF Schools
Sherman Dorn
SITE Mentor
Small Talk
Special Education Law Blog
Starting Over (Ed Week)
Swift & Change Able
Teach and Learn
Teacher Voices
Teachers At Risk
Teachers' Lounge
Teaching in the 408
Teaching Rookie
Think Lab
This is how I Swim
This Week In Education
Tim Fredrick
Up The Down Staircase
Urban Angle
VARC
What up, Mz. Smlph?
Whitney Tilson
Why Boys Fail
Why Homeschool

Educational Resources and Organizations

AALE Charter School Accreditation
Achieve
Alliance for Excellent Education
American Association of School Administrators
American Educational Research Association
American Federation of Teachers
American Institutes For Research
Annie E. Casey Foundation
Aspen Institute
Asia Society
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
The Broad Foundation
The Brookings Institution
Building Excellent Schools
Center for American Progress
Center for Education Reform
Center for School Change
Center on Education Policy
Center on Reinventing Public Education
Citizens Commission On Civil Rights
Coalition of Essential Schools
Community College Research Center
Community Training and Assistance Center
Council of Chief State School Officers
Council of Great City Schools
Core Knowledge Foundation
Data Quality Campaign
Democratic Leadership Council
eSchool News
EducationBug
Education Commission of the States
Education Evolving
Education Sector
EdSource
The Education Trust
George Lucas Educational Foundation
Greatschools.net
Haberman Foundation
Hechinger Institute On Education and the Media
IssueLab
Joyce Foundation
Just for the Kids
Knowledge Alliance
Learning Point Associates
Local School Directory
Michael and Susan Dell Foundation
Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning
The Mind Trust
Montessori
National Academies Center for Education
National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
National Association of Charter School Authorizers
National Association of Secondary School Principals
NCLBWorks
National Center for Postsecondary Research
National Center on Education and the Economy
National Charter School Research Project
NCTAF
National Council on Teacher Quality
National Education Association
National Education Writers Association
National Governors Association
National Institute for Excellence in Teaching
National School Boards Association
New Leaders for New Schools
New Schools Venture Fund
The New Teacher Project
New Vision
Pre-K Now
Harvard's Program On Education Policy and Governance
Progressive Policy Institute
PPI's 21st Century Schools Project
Public Agenda
Public Impact
Reading Reform Foundation
Rick Hess' World HQ
The Savvy Source for Parents
Scholastic Administrator
School Data Direct
Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Services
Standards Work
Teach for America
The Teaching Commission
Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
Trust for Early Education
Uncommon Schools
United States Department of Education
The Urban Institute
WestEd

Opinions on Eduwonk reflect the views of the author, Education Sector does not take institutional positions. Outgoing links do not constitute an endorsement.

Friday, December 15, 2006

New Video

Interesting video on Wapo website about AP teaching featuring DC teacher Frazier O'Leary. Pegged to this Challenge Index business.
Posted at 12:50 PM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Old Skills
Sherman Dorn makes the good point that the radical new and forward looking skills report is being disseminated more or less only on paper.
Posted at 12:46 PM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Pre-K Blogging
If you care about pre-K, you want to check out this new blog. A pre-K teacher lets you play along at home.
Posted at 12:42 PM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

It's Friday So Phone It In!
This NYT story on yesterday's skills commission report is a museum quality classic of the education story genre: It's got the big set up, the breathless quote from Jack Jennings that confirms the general storyline (in this case, this is a really important report! It could change everything!), the dismissive brush-offs from the teachers' unions about how wrongheaded it all is, and the sober middle-of-the-road quote at the end. Why mess with perfection, I know...But how about some, you know, analysis on why the unions don't like it (it proposes to reallocate teacher compensation*), what its prospects are (it could change nothing), what happened with the last report from the same gang, or whether it's significant that this blue-ribbon panel essential embraced the contracting model for delivering public education? NYT, you'll never move past #4 with stuff like this!

Incidentally, CSM's Paulson steps-up and here is a really good story on the report that actually tells us something (and has a storyline confirming quote from Jennings as a freebie bonus!).**

*In fact, in this case the story is unfair to the unions because it makes them look more reactionary than they actually are (so that's an accomplishment worth noting). They have legitimate reasons to be concerned about that part of the report, but surely support some of the more milquetoast stuff around adult education and pre-k education.

**Here's that quote: "I think we've tried to do what we can to improve American schools within the current context," says Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, who says the commission has sparked an important debate. "Now we need to think much more daringly."

Not sure I agree. I think we need to think more daringly, yes, but I don't think we tried everything or nearly hard enough to improve American schools within the current context. But I think that is sort of irrelevant today because the context has changed so much and consequently more of the same amounts to trying to make the current system work to do things we don't want it to do anymore anyway.
Posted at 9:51 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Edujob
Speaking of jobs, here's a great one at the Center for American Progress ed policy shop (pdf). You'd be working for Cindy Brown, one of the great people in town, civil rights-oriented education reformer, the sweet spot for Democrats. And the Center is doing some pretty leading edge work around teacher quality and other reform issues.

Update: Same frame, different jobs, CCCR is also hiring and seeking interns.
Posted at 9:17 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Friday Fish Porn: Job Seeking Edition...Plus Another Largemouth!
Here's Justin Stone, he's a former PPI education team member, finishing a doctorate at University of Virginia's Curry School, and looking to come to DC for an ed policy job. If he can land a bass like this, just think what he can do for your organization! Email him yourself. Like Howie Schaffer he's a Bassmaster though Justin also knows his way around a flyrod, too.
Posted at 8:40 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Thursday, December 14, 2006

NY Charter Cap Action

Joe Williams is all over the latest happenings...including the new "study." All in all though I think he has the wrong animal...when I think of the politics up there around this issue, I suspect this is something of what it looked like right after that big meteor hit eons ago...
Posted at 10:29 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Show Me The Reform
You’ll hear a lot about this New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce report in the next few days, it’s already got big media buzzing – they love a parade! It’s well worth reading and makes recommendations along multiple fronts from testing to school district structure to adult education. I don’t agree with it all (the testing regime seems a distraction from the path we're on now), though a lot hardly anyone will disagree with, but there are a few things many folks will especially school boards, school districts, and teachers’ unions. But, for my money, the most notable thing about it is its proposed financing rather than any of the recommendations themselves.

Usually these big-think reports come with a big-think price tag and a call for everyone to dig deep, value education in fiscal terms as much as we do in rhetorical ones, etc…This is the first really seminal one that I can think of that lays out the hard truth that a lot of this is going to have to be financed on resources already in the system. That’s a big signal shift and for a country that has more than doubled its education spending in a generation, it’s a sign of new seriousness about policymaking.

Some of the financing is supposed to come from increased efficiencies, and that’s a tough one. But the more concrete idea, and the one that the usual suspects will hate, is the idea of repurposing funds structurally from veteran teachers and toward newbies. Yet considering the research on teacher effectiveness, what we know about the education labor market, and how our human capital resources (salaries and benefits) are allocated in this field, fixing the misalignment is high priority. Now I’m not saying, and don’t think the commission is saying, that you can or should hose veteran teachers or create a “ten and out” system. But, there is plenty of room between those extremes and what we have now and policymakers have to go there.

The back channel chatter on this is also surfacing some resentments from folks who have worked on these various issues but feel they got short shrift in the report. Many of the ideas have been around for a while in different forms and championed by different people. The most notable instance is the contracting idea for schools, which Paul Hill has been a leader on for some time, though there are others as well on multiple issues. In some ways that is par for the course with these things, they’re compendiums and syntheses of the best ideas and thinking already out there. But, in a report that is confident in its tone and self-referencing, the authors would have done themselves a favor to make that much more clear.
Posted at 10:14 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Orszag At CBO

This is very good news.
Posted at 5:20 PM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

New Motto? And Low Turnout...Also, Ed Trust Rides High And Ed Week Rounds-Up
I'm torn between two new mottos for the blog. Per the NCLB tip sheet, should I go with "where education and gambling meet," or per the new Ed Week study (pdf) of influentials in education should I go with "The least influential of the most influential news sources?" And, of course, there is always the old standby, "Your source for education pig f***ing action."

I'd ask you all to vote on it and decide, but turns out you're not very good at that. If even half the people who read this blog daily would vote for it in the Bloggies, we'd be winning, since you can vote every day...ingrates.

Anyway, check out the Ed Week report, the methods are a little flimsy, but it's interesting. Big winner is the Ed Trust, I'd say. And it's well deserved.

And while you're at Ed Week, Olson and Hoff turn in a must-read round-up on where things stand in the NCLB ideas primary.
Posted at 4:47 PM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Challenging The Challenge Index

Tomorrow (Weds) at noon Sara Mead and I explain why we're not drinking the Challenge Index Kool-Aid in a WaPo chat. Here's the longer version in the full paper.

Update: ‘Tis done, and there is a teaser in the answers…
Posted at 11:44 PM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

At The Wire
Craig Jerald and Kevin Carey wrap up their outstanding Wire-blogging. Only thing I'd add is that I also found the No Child Left Behind storyline uncharacteristically shallow for what is overall a very textured show. Coach Carter approached the issue with more nuance and while there is a sophisticated critique of No Child from the perspective the show takes, it missed it.
Posted at 9:59 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Stranger Than Fiction?
It's bound to be the favorite stocking stuffer of the voucher crowd and surely serialized soon on Edspresso! But if you hurry to Amazon you can buy Clint Bolick's new novel "Nicki's Girl" before everyone is talking about it.

It sounds a little racy, so parents read it first, and the fawning review by "Diane Bolick from Phoenix, AZ" seems a little fishy...nonetheless other reviewers say it's a "page turner" and that it "haunts you - in a memorable and loves-lost sort of way."
Posted at 9:58 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

NCLB Tip Sheet
Last month at the Dutko – Ed Week confab, the big question was, of course, so when will No Child Left Behind be reauthorized? The consensus, explicit from some, implicit from others, was that while the administration is working on reauthorization ideas, and incoming House and Senate education chairs George Miller and Edward Kennedy want to start work on the issue, the odds are long.

So like a day at the track, here’s an Eduwonk tip sheet to probable outcomes. We’ll update it as things progress. Of course, some of these scenarios are not mutually exclusive, but for the purposes of this exercise we’re treating each as independent. So here’s the post mid-term morning line:

Outcome

Odds

Why?

Reauthorization prior to the 2008 election

15-1

If the Bush Administration wants to play for legacy and return to bipartisanship, this is about the only place they can look. And, leave aside the debate over funding, there is a fair amount of agreement on the core issues. Could be that even with higher education on the agenda, elementary and secondary education turns out to be the hot issue. Still, a lot has to happen for this to come together.

Reauthorization prior to the election based on the Aspen No Child Left Behind Commission’s report, due out in early 2007

9-1

If there is a pre-election reauthorization, this is the likely scenario. The Aspen NCLB Commission isn’t just going to offer up vague principles but rather something of a blueprint. If the administration wants to show that they still can be bipartisan and Kennedy and Miller want to protect much of NCLB, a deal around the Aspen blueprint could grease the skids for passage and enactment.

No reauthorization until after 2008 election

8/5

You’ll never go broke betting on gridlock in Washington! And, the agenda is awfully crowded on education, and in general. Coupled with a short legislative calendar and the fast approaching political season, hard to see all the complicated issues that have to be tackled for a comprehensive reauthorization being addressed before we choose a new president.

Competitiveness out- competes equity

4-1

Congress does like to do things on education and competitiveness concerns pave the way for a bipartisan education bill that avoids all the hard decisions on No Child and creates some feel-good initiatives focused on STEM careers. This could be the value play going into 2008.

National Education Association reasserts itself and rewrites the law to its liking

35-1

Sorry dues payers! As Ed Week bluntly titled a post-mortem on the 2001 NCLB enactment: “Unions' Positions Unheeded On ESEA.” A Democratic majority doesn’t hurt them but doesn’t help them all that much either because there are bad feelings on both sides of the aisles about how the unions, especially the NEA, have approached the law since its passage. George Miller shows that liberalism doesn’t have to equal water carrying for them. But, if things start to look scary for Dems in 2008, the unions stock goes up. Still, a long shot.

Conservatives rollback the federal role in elementary and secondary education

60-1

The Republican Study Group would love to see it happen and No Child has created a new group of states' rights liberals. But even though libertarian oriented Republicans are asserting themselves on the issue it's hard to see them getting much traction.

Posted at 9:56 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Monday, December 11, 2006

Beastiality In LA!

Steve Barr admits he has no solid evidence...but apparently none is needed!
Posted at 7:31 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

TFA...Googled
Google likes those TFAers...
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