Charter Schools And Illegal Immigration! Learning List Wins! Success Email Dump (They’re Winning, Too), More ESEA, Smarick V. Mead, Walsh V. AACTE, TBT – Halperin and Johnson

Don’t tell the conservatives, charter schools are a hot bed for illegal immigrants!

Learning List, a start-up that works with school districts to evaluate the alignment of various instructional materials, just got into 1776’s Challenge Festival as a People’s Choice. Win for school districts because Learning List makes them the client.

When will these damn reformers start making their own kids take the Common Core tests or send their own kids to charter schools like Success Academy?

Speaking of Success, this dump of emails about how Eva Moskowitz took NYC Mayor De Blasio down on charter schools is actually interesting. Some of it is common knowledge, that behind the scenes the mayor’s team wanted to get a deal with the charters and Eva’s ability to rally parents while the union was stuck with a rent-a-riot approach was inflicting pain. But some is more interesting: Steve Barr was working for the mayor’s team on this?

Chad Aldeman takes a look at the new ESEA proposal in the Senate. Don’t miss the 90 days dig.  Tanya Paperny puts on the black and white stripes to referee the recent debate between Sara Mead and Andy Smarick.

I hope Senator Patty Murray has an ace up her sleeve on this ESEA bill because it seems like on some key issues Democrats are trading away good ideas to keep bad Republican ideas out of the bill. Maybe that’s just what defense looks like these days?

Passion versus exploration (this article is safe for work).

Pension LIFO.  Also on pensions, you won’t read a better lede than this one this week (at least on pensions anyway, c’mon it’s education) and the article is important, points up fees pension funds are paying. Remind me again why today’s teacher pensions are so good for teachers and shouldn’t be reformed?

By the way, all teacher skepticism about evaluations and administrators is not without some cause…

Kate Walsh says AACTE can’t embrace accountability. Seems totally unfair. It’s not like the head of it also makes six figures on the boards of skeeezy for-profit colleges or something…

A reminder that my blog posts are not a representative list of links around the education sector, duh. Rather, it’s the stuff that is catching my eye one way or another. For a more systematic and broader round-up Emmeline Zhao does that twice a day at RealClearEducation. That unique curated roster of links is invaluable if you really need to know what is happening across the sector and need high quality information.

It’s the anniversary of ESEA – a half century*. A few years ago I moderated a discussion with Sam Halperin, Chris Cross, Jack Jennings, and Kati Haycock about the history and changes to this historic law, now called No Child Left Behind. Fascinating discussion for a packed room of people with a sense that it was fleeting history. Sam’s gone now but here he is with President Johnson at a White House event tied to the signing of the original law (which happened in Texas):

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*Secretary Duncan is giving a talk on this and apparently the administration forgot to invite any of the still living people who were key to various iterations of this law or family of those who are not? Inexplicable but illustrative.

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