Justin Cohen takes-on Andy Smarick on turnarounds. Important debate. Speaking of debate, some new research on its benefit for students. In our space a few leaders have emerged from the debate scene (Sims, Coleman, for instance).
Charter school market share continues to grow, and you can see its impact politically in more places as well.
Interesting article on Sesame Street from Miller-McCune.
Pets, poems, and pupils, what’s not to like?
In the spirit of the season this new Century Foundation brief on differentiated compensation is a cornucopia of questionable assumptions, leaps, and strawmen as is too much of what’s out there on this issue. This podcast from NPR is a better bet, which is a broader conversation about how to link compensation to outcomes and CAP has done some useful work on this.
Also on teacher quality, Louisiana is leading the way on looking at the effectiveness of teacher preparation schemes. A lot of learning there for the teacher prep community and state policymakers looking to get serious about quality. And keep an eye out for some new research coming from Jane Hannaway and her colleagues on teacher effectiveness in high-and low-poverty schools, some human capital management implications.
I’m right with you on the strawmen (used the same term myself, actually: http://nashvillejefferson.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/eight-reasons-not-to-tie-teacher-pay-to-standardized-test-results/).
I feel like differentiated compensation is definitely coming on down the line, and it’s going to take quite a bit deeper conversation to resolve the (very real) issues that are coming (and will continue to come) up. Nice link to Planet Money, by the way. Great show — they promised a while back that this would be a “continuing series,” so we should jump on them about that once the healthcare thing is over with.