Read past the ridiculous shot at Teach For America, this Ed Week commentary by NCATE’s Art Wise is thought provoking and worth reading.
Good news for charter schools in Buffalo here and here. Punchline? No moratorium. NYT’s Winter has an update about action on student loans.
Update: More Buffalo here. Very strong column.
There are so many things wrong with this Bloomberg story it’s hard to know where to begin. The school profiled is not even a Title I school (and it’s in Scarsdale…) when the law is aimed to help disadvantaged ones; it plays into this nonsense about NCLB being a corporate plot by showcasing the support of “corporate executives” while ignoring the primary impetus behind much of the law — liberal school reformers; the NEA gets away with all sorts of unchecked assertions; and, while Gary Orfield says that, “It [NCLB] shows an ignorance and arrogance that’s stunning…People who really care about schools being good for poor kids see it is doing damage,” these people, and these people, and these people, and this person, and this person, (just for starters) not only don’t make an appearance in the story, but apparently don’t care about poor kids? Can’t we at least argue on facts and not outrageous assertions, or is this what it has come to?
In case you missed it, here is NYT’s Freedman with a more informed and less black/white perspective.
RFK’s children send a letter to LAUSD asking them to turn the entire Ambassador Hotel into an education complex. Berkeley’s Bernard Gifford and the Thernstroms discuss the achievement gap here. And, U.S. Department of Education announces new Blue Ribbon School here.
Reason’s Snell looks at some of the problems with No Child’s public school choice provisions and proposes a solution…you’ll never guess what…
Some hand-wringing over about half of South Carolina schools not making “adequate yearly progress” under NCLB. But, as this article notes, to make AYP this year fewer than one in five students at a school needed to be proficient in math and reading based on the state’s test. Next year the cut jumps to an equally outrageous one in three! State schools chief (and U.S. Senate candidate) Inez Tenenbaum notes, “We continue to make progress, and that’s very good news,” Tenenbaum said. “But we have a long way to go before all of our students and schools are achieving at the ‘Proficient’ level. When it comes to academic success, no child should be left behind.”