Eduwonk

National Journal’s Brian Friel reports on the National Education Association’s new spin-off group, “America Learns.” Modeled after issue advocacy groups like the Sierra Club and NRA, the group will “enlarge the public policy debate about public education and zero in on No Child Left Behind,” according to its new director. Eduwonk wonders which of those two issues will be the priority?

So let’s recap. Faced with a strongly anti-labor administration (that particularly loathes the NEA) and a Labor Department and IRS investigation of its finances and political activities, the NEA is….launching an organization to attack a law aimed at ensuring that poor and minority kids get a decent education. America might learn…but apparently not the NEA.

Another thoughtful discussion on charter schools, this time from Buffalo.

According to the New York Times, a new study shows promising results improving brain function for dyslexic readers. But, the treatment group got intensive and systematic phonics. Interesting finding…will it have any effect on the minds of the strident anti-phonics crowd?

Update! Education Week is on the case too!

Lloyd Bond has some pretty sensible thoughts on “teaching to the test” in the most recent Carnegie Perspectives.

Ruth Mitchell has a must-read op-ed in today’s Washington Post on teaching, learning, and standards. It’s overly anecdotal in places (despite plenty of data to support her point) but overall a compelling argument for standards and the tough love of No Child Left Behind for struggling schools.

Jay Mathews writes on teaching about the Brown v. Board anniversary and the 1954 Bolling v. Sharpe case which desegregated public schools in Washington, D.C. His piece is historical, but as Mitchell shows, in many ways we’re still a nation with dual school systems.

Key Mitchell grafs:

The public is largely unaware of the problem. Those who follow education, write editorials and commentaries and make policy were themselves successful students who were in the highest tracks at their high schools, and their children are also successful students enjoying the best and most experienced teachers, because they’re in the AP and International Baccalaureate (IB) classes. Legislators and policymakers tend to come from a social class in which people not only have benefited from good teachers but also have fond memories of a particular teacher or teachers who turned them on to the pleasures of poetry or the intricacies of DNA.

Students in the schools we visit are not turned on. Black, brown, speaking broken or accented English, with cultural values clashing with those of the white middle class, they are seen as needing elementary instruction in secondary school; as capable only of drawing and coloring; as in need of discipline rather than encouragement. They are asked to make acrostics in middle school social studies; to write eight sentences in high school English class; and to fill out endless worksheets in math class.

Teachers say they have to teach the students where they are, which means at sixth-grade level in high school if they can’t read well. Their attitude may be compassionate, but it is misguided.

Well said. Except it’s not obvious the public is unaware of the problem. The continuing support for No Child Left Behind despite the mobilization and P.R. campaign against it is one indicator. Majority support for vouchers among African-Americans is an ominous sign too.

Crew is back….in Miami.

Denis Doyle tells the Los Angeles Times that social promotion is yesterday’s fight. Today it’s about rethinking how we use time and group children he says. He’s right. But local efforts to do this tend to make a lot of parents berserk.

Afterthought: It seems that almost every issue is yesterday’s fight, it’s a convenient lede and good rhetorical opener. But if it’s true, then why all the disagreement today?

Bonus afterthought: How do those formidable Fins organize time in their schools? Aha! The New York Times sheds some light in yet another pro-Fin story.

Is it just us or have a spate of news stories lauded how wonderful the schools in Finland are? It’s almost like the Finnish government sponsored a junket there for education reporters or is waging some sort of P.R. campaign….

Paisley, Oregon, is embracing charter schooling to cope with state budget cuts as well as declining enrollment. Might not be what some charter supporters have in mind, but it’s a great strategy to stave off consolidation and is working so far.

We knew the stakes were high in the coming election but had no idea just what was at stake. Writing on National Review Online William Dennis says that Senator Kerry’s college aid plan is not only bad policy but “harmful to a free society”!!!

The Kerry camp can probably rest easy on this one. If the freshest criticism of Kerry’s plan to link some college aid to national service is a tired rehash of the old arguments against national service, then they’re in pretty good shape on this issue.

PS–Dennis isn’t completely wrong. We still don’t know enough about the interaction between college aid and institutional behavior, and it may well exert a negative influence. But, while researchers and analysts sort that out it’s OK to advance policies expanding access to higher education.