Weekend Edu-Reads

“…a report by Grantmakers for Education released earlier this year, revealed a precipitous decline in the areas of education funding that were dominant across the prior decade. Grants for issues related to the academic core of schooling—teacher quality, accountability, standards and assessment, for example— all saw deep cuts.” That’s from this excellent piece by Celine Coggins on the state of edu-philanthropy.

A new study out of Texas finds that more years of schooling is related to higher earnings, even for people who don’t complete a college degree and ultimately drop out.

Check out the video here about Bellwether’s work to end the fragmentation of supports for high-need students in Utah.

Care about teacher shortages? Read Phillip Burgoyne-Allen on the school bus driver shortage, and what districts can do about it.

Tom Toch interviews Brian Pick about curriculum and instruction in the District of Columbia Public Schools.

I got a chuckle out of a tweet from the Pennsylvania Treasurer account asking why pension plans chase after active investments rather than being passive investors. While current Treasurer Joe Torsella has used his power to transition other state funds to index-based investments, and the Pennsylvania Treasurer does not control the investments made by the Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System (PSERS), Pennsylvania teachers are investing 17.1 percent of their money in hedge funds, 16.5 percent in private equity, and another 17 percent in commodities and real estate. Those are, ahem, not exactly passive investments!

This long New Yorker piece on “The Day the Dinosaurs Died” came out earlier this year, but I strongly recommend it. It’s a fascinating story of geology, paleontology, and history.

–Guest post by Chad Aldeman