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Reviews of Eduwonk.com

2007 Winner, Editor's Choice Best Education Blog
-- Performancing.com

2006 Winner, Best K-12 Administration Blog -- "Best of the Education Blog Awards"
-- eSchool News and Discovery Education

2006 Finalist, Best Education Blog
-- Weblog Awards

Least influential of education's most influential information sources.
-- Education Week Research Center

"unexpectedly entertaining"..."tackle[s] a potentially mindfogging subject with cutting clarity... they're reading those mushy, brain-numbing education stories so you don't have to!"
-- Slate's Mickey Kaus

"a very smart blog... [if] you're trying to separate the demagogic attacks on NCLB from the serious criticism, this is the site to read"
-- The New Republic's Ryan Lizza

"everyone who's anyone reads Eduwonk"
-- Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media's Richard Colvin

"full of very lively short items and is always on top of the news...He gets extra points for skewering my high school rating system"
-- Jay Mathews, The Washington Post

"a daily dose of information from the education policy world, blended with a shot of attitude and a dash of humor"
-- Education Week

"designed to cut through the fog and direct specialists and non-specialists alike to the center of the liveliest and most politically relevant debates on the future of our schools"
-- The New Dem Daily

"peppered with smart and witty comments on the education news of the day"
-- Education Gadfly

"don't hate Eduwonk cuz it's so good"
-- Alexander Russo, This Week In Education

"the morning's first stop for education bomb-throwers everywhere"
-- Mike Antonucci, Intercepts

"…the big dog on the ed policy blog-ck…"
-- Michele McLaughlin, AFT Blog

"I check Eduwonk several times a day, especially since I cut back on caffeine"
-- Joe Williams, fallen journalist, Executive Director, Democrats for Education Reform

"...one of the few bloggers who isn't completely nuts"
-- Mike Petrilli, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation

"I have just three 'go to' websites: The Texas Legislature, Texas Longhorn sports, and Eduwonk"
-- Sandy Kress, former education advisor to President Bush and former chairman, Dallas Board of Education

"penetrating analysis in a lively style on a wide range of issues"
-- Walt Gardner, champion letter-to-the-editor writer and retired teacher

"thugs"
-- Susan Ohanian

Education News and Analysis

American Educator
Chronicle of Higher Education
EducationNews.org
Education Next
Education Week
eSchool News
Inside Higher Ed
Jay Mathews' Class Struggle
Phi Delta Kappan
New York Times Education
School Wise Press
Stateline.org
Teacher Magazine

Policy and Political Blogs

The American Scene
Andrew Sullivan.com
Bloggingheads
Booker Rising
The Corner
Daniel Drezner
Dangerous Thoughts
The Democratic Strategist
Foresight
The Has Been
Huffington Post
Instapundit.com
Kausfiles.com
Loose Cannon
Matthew Yglesias
Mojo
Oxblog
The Plank (TNR)
Political Animal (Washington Monthly)
The Politico
Post Global
Real Clear Politics
Scotusblog
Taking Note
Talkingpointsmemo.com
Tank'd
Tapped
Think Tank Town
Volokh Conspiracy
WSJ's Blog Federation
Washington Whispers

EduReading


Collective Bargaining in Education: Negotiating Change in Today's Schools

Edited by Jane Hannaway and Andrew J. Rotherham


Why Newsweek's List of America's 100 Best High Schools Doesn't Make the Grade

By Andrew J. Rotherham
and Sara Mead

A Qualified Teacher
in Every Classroom

Edited by Frederick M. Hess, Andrew J. Rotherham,
and Kate Walsh

America's Teaching Crisis

By Jason Kamras and Andrew J. Rotherham

Rethinking Special Education For A New Century

Edited by Chester E. Finn, Jr., Andrew J. Rotherham
& Charles R. Hokanson, Jr.

Making The Cut: How States Set Passing Scores on Standardized Tests

By Andrew J. Rotherham

Education Blogs

A Constrained Vision
Andrew Pass
a schoolyard blog
ASCD
Assorted Stuff
Mr. B-G's English Blog
Barnett Berry
Bill Jackson's Education Blog
Bridging Differences (Meier and Ravitch)
Bulletin Board (NASBE)
Campaign K-12 (Ed Week)
Chaos Theory
Charter Blog (NAPCS)
Charter School Policy Inst. Blog
Chez Dormont
Chris Correa
Class Context
The College Puzzle
College Ready Blog (Athens Learning Group)
The Common School
Conversation Starters
Core Knowledge Blog
Critical Mass
Dangerously Irrelevant
Daryl Cobranchi
Dave Shearon
Dave Saba (ABCTE)
DC Education Blog
D-EDreckoning
Dems for Education Reform
The Deputy Head
Early Ed Watch
Early Stories
edbizbuzz
EdPol
Edspresso
Educated Nation
Educating One Mind
The Education Network
The Education Wonks
EduFlack
Eduoptimists
EdWahoo
Eduwonkette
Edwize (UFT)
Eponymous Educator
Essential Blog
Extra Credit
Flypaper (Fordham)
Fordham Fellows
From The Trenches
The Gadfly
Get On The Bus (Dayton Daily News)
Get Schooled (AJC)
The Gradebook (St. Pete Times)
Grumpy Professor
The Hall Monitor
Higher Ed Watch
Hip Teacher
I Thought A Think
IALA
In Other News (Ed Week)
Inside Pre-K
Instructivist
Intercepts
IvyGate
Jay Greene
Jenny D.
Joannejacobs.com
John Merrow
K-12 Hotlinks
Kindling Flames
Kitchen Table Math
Learning Now (PBS)
The Life That Chose Me
Mathew K. Tabor
Media Infusion
Ms. Frizzle
Moving At The Speed Of Creativity
NCLB Act II (Ed Week)
NCLBlog (AFT)
Newoldschoolteacher
NSBA's BoardBuzz
NYC Educator
Paper Trail (USN)
ParaNews (NCP)
Parentalcation
Paul Baker
Pedablogue
The Portable Princess
The PrincipalsPage
Principal's Policy Blog (NASSP)
Quasi Dictum
Roy Romer
Running on Empty
School of Blog
School Zone (MJS)
Schools for Tomorrow
Science After School
SF Schools
Sherman Dorn
SITE Mentor
Small Talk
Special Education Law Blog
Starting Over (Ed Week)
Swift & Change Able
Teach and Learn
Teacher Voices
Teachers At Risk
Teachers' Lounge
Teaching in the 408
Teaching Rookie
Think Lab
This is how I Swim
This Week In Education
Tim Fredrick
Up The Down Staircase
Urban Angle
VARC
What up, Mz. Smlph?
Whitney Tilson
Why Boys Fail
Why Homeschool

Educational Resources and Organizations

AALE Charter School Accreditation
Achieve
Alliance for Excellent Education
American Association of School Administrators
American Educational Research Association
American Federation of Teachers
American Institutes For Research
Annie E. Casey Foundation
Aspen Institute
Asia Society
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
The Broad Foundation
The Brookings Institution
Building Excellent Schools
Center for American Progress
Center for Education Reform
Center for School Change
Center on Education Policy
Center on Reinventing Public Education
Citizens Commission On Civil Rights
Coalition of Essential Schools
Community College Research Center
Community Training and Assistance Center
Council of Chief State School Officers
Council of Great City Schools
Core Knowledge Foundation
Data Quality Campaign
Democratic Leadership Council
eSchool News
EducationBug
Education Commission of the States
Education Evolving
Education Sector
EdSource
The Education Trust
George Lucas Educational Foundation
Greatschools.net
Haberman Foundation
Hechinger Institute On Education and the Media
IssueLab
Joyce Foundation
Just for the Kids
Knowledge Alliance
Learning Point Associates
Local School Directory
Michael and Susan Dell Foundation
Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning
The Mind Trust
Montessori
National Academies Center for Education
National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
National Association of Charter School Authorizers
National Association of Secondary School Principals
NCLBWorks
National Center for Postsecondary Research
National Center on Education and the Economy
National Charter School Research Project
NCTAF
National Council on Teacher Quality
National Education Association
National Education Writers Association
National Governors Association
National Institute for Excellence in Teaching
National School Boards Association
New Leaders for New Schools
New Schools Venture Fund
The New Teacher Project
New Vision
Pre-K Now
Harvard's Program On Education Policy and Governance
Progressive Policy Institute
PPI's 21st Century Schools Project
Public Agenda
Public Impact
Reading Reform Foundation
Rick Hess' World HQ
The Savvy Source for Parents
Scholastic Administrator
School Data Direct
Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Services
Standards Work
Teach for America
The Teaching Commission
Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
Trust for Early Education
Uncommon Schools
United States Department of Education
The Urban Institute
WestEd

Opinions on Eduwonk reflect the views of the author, Education Sector does not take institutional positions. Outgoing links do not constitute an endorsement.

Friday, November 04, 2005

Weekend Reading

Planning to spend the beautiful weekend figuring out the deal on this Alito fellow? Save time and read Bruce Reed's primer and then go outside.
Posted at 2:20 PM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

NY Contract Update
Passed, but not by a lot as these things go...Times here, NY Post here...
Posted at 8:53 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Vitter Vouchers Update
The Times reports on the state of play and the pivotal Sen. Kennedy. Sure seems like voucher supporters get a precedent here, not the program itself which is extraordinary, but an agreed upon framework for how to send public aid to private schools for tuition that goes beyond Zelman despite the language about no proselytizing in this bill. Changing edupolitics...
Posted at 8:42 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

TFA'ers Speak (And Kopp Speaks)
Not sure you need a survey to figure out what TFA'ers think since most of them seem to have blogs...nonetheless, now there is a formal survey (pdf) about their attitudes and it offers a lot of very interesting and against the grain stuff, especially in terms of the raging debate within education circles about whether or not schools contribute to the achievement gap or merely reflect it. Also some interesting pre-and post-TFA data shedding some light on how the experience changes views.

Yes, you knew it was coming…it is a must-read. But, while you read it bear in mind that these teachers are working in the nation's most challenged schools. Columnists searching for ideas, there are about a half-dozen good ones in here starting with the low-hanging fruit of comparing the TFA'ers views to what the public thinks and a lot of politicians say...

Also, the Eduworld is indeed gossipy. Eduwonk got more than a dozen calls and emails yesterday because people noticed that TFA founder Wendy Kopp and her husband Richard Barth (an edulegend in his own right) were on the guest list for the State Dinner with Prince Charles and Camilla. It surely was not Kopp's first WH turn, President Clinton was and is a big TFA fan. But, readers wanted details and so after some prodding Kopp agreed to dish a little about the main questions readers want to know (what she wore, who they sat with, etc...).

Here's the dirt: She wore a black cocktail dress, her husband a tux. They sat at the President's table, he tipped them off to this during the receiving line with a joke. They sat next to actor Kelsey Grammer and Charles and Barbara Bush (update: in response to several reader queries the answer is no, not the hot one.) were also at the table. The conversation was wide-ranging but included how to help New Orleans where TFA is a presence. Kopp was complimentary of the President's remarks and also said: "Let me just also use this opportunity to say that it's downright embarrassing to see what the media and the public are doing to Camilla. She's great -- very nice -- " So there you have it.
Posted at 8:18 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

TX Teacher Tussle
TX Gov. Rick Perry used executive action to create a merit pay plan there. Needless to say, not everyone is thrilled. Supporters of incorporating performance into teacher pay should be skeptical as well, the ram it down their throats strategy shifts the debate from substance to process and there is something to be said for the buy-in and authority that comes with mustering a legislative majority...
Posted at 7:30 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Consolidation
School and school district consolidation is always a contentious issue. A new analysis (pdf) from Deloitte Research argues that consolidating services, not schools and districts, may be a more cost-efficient solution. (Summary here). Some of this happens now with ESA's (also called BOCES, which though cited, particularly NY's, get short shrift overall in this report) but the report argues for more activity in this area.

NCLB is obviously causing a movement of decisionmaking away from school districts and toward states and finance litigation is doing the same. Service aggregation should be less controversial because it's voluntary and more about add-ons than core activities but it does speak to the same trends and evolution.
Posted at 7:19 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Thursday, November 03, 2005

LA Not Confidential

LA Daily News takes a look at the Gates Foundation and LAUSD.
Posted at 6:43 PM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Two Trends
Two trends worth watching, both helpfully reported by the NY Times. In Colorado, the TABOR movement took a big hit. With a lot of states running structural deficits (pdf) of varying degrees of severity, this is politically and substantively important for schools.

A little more below the radar, The Times' Michael Janofsky reports on SMU's new Ed School and the not so hidden hand of the Bushies in it. Keep an eye on this issue...there are various proposals to greenfield new ed schools or take existing ones and infuse more rigor and traditional content (for instance Core Knowledge) floating around and some serious money interested in seeing some changes in preparation. It's an essential issue to address though not an easy one as it involves all of the greatest hits of why educational change is hard: serious regulatory capture, vested interests, inertia, and ideology...
Posted at 10:47 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Read Eduwonk, Get A Job
The Broad Foundation is hiring. Interesting work, great people, and LA cool at least by association...
Posted at 9:14 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Read Eduwonk, Earn Millions
Reader JG notes that if one were to combine the data on Schoolmatters.com with this mapping service it would be a handy one stop school shopping site for parents, especially parents in the process of relocating. Good idea.

Bonus idea: Combine it with Russo's map of where edubloggers live (which is right up there with a sex offender registry in terms of people you don't want to live near) and then you've really got something useful.
Posted at 9:07 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

The Education Sector
The new issue of The Education Sector is now online. Read about the new flanking strategy for voucher proponents, Edison Schools, NAEP results, Teach For America and a whole lot more.

Better yet, subscribe to get it by email by clicking here, it's free and your email will never be sold, traded, ransomed, etc...so no spam.
Posted at 9:01 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Keep Your Enemies Close
If you're following the UFT contract saga, take note of this nice break for UFT honcho Randi Weingarten. One of her fiercest critics, leader in this group, has been fired and now she gets to go to bat to defend him.

Update: More back and forth at Edwize showing what an interesting tale this is.
Posted at 8:57 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Buckeye Fever...Catch It!

Seriously, be honest, who doesn't spend hours upon hours wondering about what people in Ohio think about education?

Thankfully, someone has responded and filled this void. The Fordham Foundation gets back to its Buckeye roots with some help from the Farkas Duffett Research Group and examines what Ohioans think about schools (pdf). Farkas and Duffett, two key Public Agenda alums, are some of the best in the business so there is some actual texture and nuance in here worth checking out and unless you believe that Ohioans are completely freakish there's some food for thought for elsewhere, too.

Update: Cleveland Plain Dealer catches Buckeye Fever.
Posted at 12:01 PM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

The Royal Treatment...And The Balanced Treatment
Prince Charles and his wife Camilla are visiting the SEED school in Washington today. (Do it yourself...Eduwonk will leave the jokes about sleep-overs, boarding schools, etc...which are already coming in via email, to readers.)

On Noon Monday Nov. 21, Urban Institute and CRPE are hosting a forum on charter schools to mark the release of: Hopes, Fears, and Reality a new annual analysis of charter schooling from CRPE's National Charter School Research Project. The speaker line-up is:

· Paul T. Hill, Chair, NCSRP
· Robin J. Lake, Executive Director, NCSRP
· Andrew Rotherham, Co-founder, Education Sector
· Joe Dominic, Program Officer, Heinz Foundation (invited)
· Todd Ziebarth, Policy Analyst, Augenblick, Palaich, and Associates (2003-2005)

The event starts at noon, you get fed at 11:45, and you can RSVP and save yourself a seat and a sandwich by emailing here. Copies of the report will be available.
Posted at 11:36 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Wildly Off-Message

It's funny, when outsiders say stuff like this they're called teacher bashers, but how to explain this cold shower from local teachers' union head (and NEA New York Board of Directors member) Morty Rosenfeld?

If the United States is to preserve our system of free public schools, teacher unions are going to have to stop accepting the status quo and making excuses for the poor performance of our students. Most of us know that contrary to all of the talk about how we are raising our standards, in most of our schools they continue to decline. The low scores on the so-called high stakes tests are testimony to the fact that large numbers of students leave school knowing next to nothing and ill equipped for any but the most menial of jobs.

More...and well worth reading.

Via EIA.
Posted at 8:28 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

This Week On The March
Never a dull moment in the edublog world. First This Week's Russo took on Fairtest calling them a "fringe" element. Now he's taking it to the mainstream and picking a fight with the Council of Chief State School Officers over copyright law...stay tuned...
Posted at 8:21 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Monday, October 31, 2005

Winner

Governing Magazine names Boston sup't. Tom Payzant one of its 2005 Public Officials of the Year.
Posted at 12:13 PM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post

Happy Halloween From The King
Eduwonk has two edupooches, Madison and Monroe. But on Halloween Monroe (left) thinks not of presidents from Virginia but rather of kings...The King.
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Super Ed-Flex
No, it's not a superhero, rather it is part of NCLB. Title I Monitor takes a look at where things stand with the initiative and whether it will/should continue. Interestingly, this was one of the most contentious parts of NCLB but it's been a snoozer since passage.
Posted at 8:17 AM | Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post