Quick announcement: Starting in September I’m going to write a weekly column on education issues for Time.com and occasionally for the magazine. Obviously, I’m excited about this great opportunity but as with most new things it means some changes, too.
Most notably, I will not be contributing to US News and World Report anymore. I first collaborated with them on their high school rankings, an outgrowth of this paper (pdf) showing that the Newsweek rankings favored many schools that were shortchanging kids. While not perfect I continue to think that the USN high school rankings are the best ones out there if you care about equity within schools, achievement gaps, and advanced course-taking. That work led to a contributor relationship for several years. For that I want to thank Robert Schlesinger, a thoughtful and overworked opinions editor. And I especially want to thank Brian Kelly, USN’s editor, for the opportunities he gave me, support, and friendship. It is not a secret that these are tough times for the news and publishing business but Brian illustrates why that’s largely situational and not a reflection of the quality of people working in that field.
So you can look for the Time.com column in September and I’ll still be blogging here.