It’s March 17th. Seven decades ago today President Roosevelt officially opened The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Here’s the scene. Discussing the burgeoning American artistic tradition The President noted that Americans, “have seen, across these last few years, rooms full of paintings by Americans, walls covered with the paintings of Americans – some of it good, some of it no good, but all of it native, human, eager and alive – all of it painted by their own kind in their own country, and painted about things they know and look at often and have touched and loved.”
A little less artistic, but here’s what I’m reading, including several really interesting reports:
In the book that Jane Hannaway and I did on collective bargaining in education we pointed out the lack of research about the impact of collective bargaining on student achievement. That doesn’t stop advocates on all sides of the debate from making all kinds of ridiculous claims but the fact is there is very little solid research. After all, you can’t just randomly assign labor conditions to different states. Into that void walks Ben Lindy in the Yale Law Journal in an article you should check out (pdf) who takes advantage of a natural experiment to look at this question.
Charters respond to the most recent Detroit proposal, must-reading if you follow the issue. Check out this new report on teacher tenure from Public Impact (pdf). Fordham adds some perspective on student achievement in the international context. And Appleseed takes a look at how decisions boards and other governance bodies make can affect outcomes.
Bridgespan takes a look at trends in the non-profit sector. Things are stabilizing.