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
NCLB News
While all the media buzz this week has been about the borderline hopeless appeals of various anti-NCLB lawsuits, the real story is that the judge in the Connecticut case has allowed the NAACP to intervene in the case there on behalf of the Bush Administration. That's a big deal on substance and politics.
Go Team! Question: What do Hoosiers like even more than hoops?
Answer:Screwing-over charter school kids!Posted at 12:55 PM |Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this postFriday Fish Porn! Alaska Edition Here's Doug Levin, he runs the ed policy shop at Cable in the Classroom. That's a big king salmon from Alaska he caught this summer. Doug says about 35lbs, and it looks it. He caught his limit that day and had them flown back to Washington, D.C. That's good eating!
Posted at 7:29 AM |Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this postWhere You Stand, Where You Sit? In the LA Times, LAUSD School Board member Julie Korenstein says charter schools, "are still a gamble without really knowing what impact it is going to make on students. You have to start wondering if it's a good idea to gamble with students' education."
By gum, that is a good thing to wonder about! But considering the grim outcomes for students in LA - 258 college graduates a year in South LA from schools serving 60K kids at a half-billion a year cost, charters, despite the variance, somehow don't seem like such bad odds for parents...In fact, Steve Barr's schools, Green Dot Public Schools, which the article is about, have much better numbers, a reasonable parent would be excused for taking that gamble and for thinking it's a good idea! I believe gamblers, should there be any around, would call that a “positive expectation” situation…
Posted at 7:06 AM |Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this postThursday, November 30, 2006
More Urban Schools...And DC Schools
It seems pretty indisputable that whatever one thinks of charter schools, they do cause some changes in school districts where they're present in any significant number. It's a legitimate question whether those changes actually get to the level of teaching and learning, but as the dance Washington D.C. Superintendent Janey is doing illustrates, they do shake things up. You could argue, of course, that charters are merely present in large numbers in places where things are really screwed up and so that, not the charters, causes changes. But I think the evidence runs the other way.
In any event, I was thinking about all that reading Janey's remarks and Mike Casserly's interesting op-ed in Sunday's WaPo. Casserly is exactly right that governance changes alone don't solve anything. Paul Hill made that point in greater depth in this paper a few years back. But where I think Mike gets it wrong, or doesn't engage enough, is the question of the best way to get to alignment and clarity in a place like D.C. I think the notion that consolidating power and accountability and reworking the system that way, with that leverage point, rather than trying to do it through a demonstrably dysfunctional governance arrangement is a very plausible theory of action. And, since the process that puts in place a mayoral takeover, the option on the table now, has to be democratic at some level -- mayoral election, state legislature, etc...I don't see it as illegitimate. Likewise, it doesn't have to be permanent, either. Further, in this case, as Mike points out, the redundancy in education governance in Washington is almost comical. D.C. could do a lot worse than look to Hawaii for some ideas on having a unified state/school district structure since there is only one school district in Washington in the first place. So Mike's right about the core issues, but I'm not sure the process question, how to get there, is nearly as encouraging as he makes it out to be. In other words, I don't have much confidence in the current arrangements in D.C. to bring about the changes, even with the pressure of the growing market share of charters.
Update: Sara Mead, who knows much more about D.C.'s education scene than most, makes some good points about going the Hawaii route and I should have been clearer. I'm not saying that D.C. should adopt the HI model whole hog. Rather, I'm merely saying that there is a lot of redundancy and even considering the pluralism around charter schools and the dual responsibilities of being a state and a school district, there are ways to structure governance that are a lot more streamlined, aligned, and effective than the system now and HI shows that.
Posted at 9:44 AM |Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this postWednesday, November 29, 2006
New Edublog: Early Stories
You probably need another edublog like you need one of these, but here's one worth checking out: Early Stories. It's the blog of Richard Colvin, who runs the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media. Richard's a big wheel in education journalism and knows early-childhood issues so keep your eye on his blog -- especially if you want to know what went wrong/right when a big edustory breaks or if early-childhood is your thing. There's been some hoping Richard would stick his toe in the bloggy swamp, and now he's here. Welcome.
Posted at 4:59 PM |Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post
BTW--while you're at Ed Next, check the whole thing out. They deserve some credit, creating an interesting mag/journal isn't all that hard in the first 24 months or so when you can clear the shelves of good ideas and writing. But keeping it interesting for a lot longer than that is not such an easy feat and they've done it very well. It's a must read among a wide swath of folks. This issue, Guthrie, Davis, Williams, and Peterson (Julie! But Paul is there, too...), it's great stuff.
Posted at 10:21 PM |Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this postAha! It's About The Funding! It's no wonder they taught me that it was cool to club seals when I was in school....
Posted at 10:16 PM |Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this postEdujob
If you like edupolicy, can edit, and want to work in a deadline oriented environment, then check out this opening at ES.
Posted at 10:13 PM |Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this postMonday, November 27, 2006
A Reprieve? In his comprehensive write-up of likely Bush Administration targets for more aggressive oversight and investigations in National Journal's election post-mortem issue ($), Brian Friel, who covers the edubeat for NJ, didn't highlight Reading First? The CW is that incoming Chairman Miller wants his committee to look into it, does Friel know something he's not spilling? Or is this issue just considered way too B-list to matter?
Posted at 8:29 AM |Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this post
Great Scott! Or Delayed Rheeax?
All you need to know about where education politics are heading over time can be found in the tag line of this Ed Week commentary...but the whole thing is worth reading. Cue the AFTies to tell us how deluded we all are and what dupes those CA legislators were.
Posted at 8:21 AM |Comments: 0 | Link to this item | Email this postEvents, The Acceptable Alternative To Work!
Why actually produce work, when you can go to events, see your friends and colleagues, eat someone else's food, and all under the guise of doing your job? Here are two in the next two weeks for you to check out. First, tomorrow (28th), at the National Press Club, The Century Foundation is hosting a prebut session about race and integration in schools (pdf). With the SCOTUS set to hear arguments on two cases next month, now's your chance to get up to speed. They've compiled a diverse group.
Here's Doug Levin, he runs the ed policy shop at Cable in the Classroom. That's a big king salmon from Alaska he caught this summer. Doug says about 35lbs, and it looks it. He caught his limit that day and had them flown back to Washington, D.C. That's good eating!
In his comprehensive write-up of likely Bush Administration targets for more aggressive oversight and investigations in National Journal's election post-mortem issue ($), Brian Friel, who covers the edubeat for NJ, didn't highlight Reading First? The CW is that incoming Chairman Miller wants his committee to look into it, does Friel know something he's not spilling? Or is this issue just considered way too B-list to matter?