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Legislation that would make it easier to create charter schools in failing school districts was officially signed into law on Thursday. "With this legislation signed today, we are taking another step to expand access to high quality school options to ensure that more students are stepping into classrooms that will give them a better education and a brighter future," said Gov. Chris Christie. "We have much further to go to reform education in New Jersey and ensure we are getting results for all children, regardless of their zip code.

On Monday, parents and guardians will be able to access individual student scores from this year's state tests. SchoolBook asked some teachers to help put the scores in the context of classroom learning. Their overall response: consider the test results as a snapshot and take them with a proverbial grain of salt, or two.

I literally am sitting at my desk with tears in my eyes as I type this article.  I don't think  I have felt this much shame about being an American since the execution of Troy Davis.  It is times like these I am reminded that no matter how noble our written intentions are in the Constitution, our system is really only as "good" as the people who run it. If you don't know the story of Tanya  McDowell she made headlines last year when she was arrested for using a friend's address to send her son to a school in a better neighborhood.  At the time, McDowell was homeless but wanted her son to have access to a quality education.

The foundation invested more than $159 million in education reform initiatives in 2011, marking the largest single-year investment in education reform initiatives. Grants were made to organizations and programs that empower parents, particularly in low-income communities, to choose among quality, publicly funded schools for their children. The foundation invests to expand the right of all parents to have access to quality schools, regardless of type, with the goal of ultimately increasing student achievement. List of grants can be found at http://waltonfamilyfoundation.org/2011-education-reform-grant-list

Put three rockstars of the education world in a room together and you get this fantastic panel from last week's Netroots Nation on the future of public education, the importance of community organizing and the path towards systemic education reform to provide every child with a fair and substantive opportunity to learn.  The panelists were education historian Diane Ravicth, John H. Jackson, President & CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education, and Ken Bernstein, a long-time teacher and education advocate. All three had harsh words for policymakers pedaling ineffective or untested policies as viable reform strategies. "We don't have an innovation challenge, we have an implementation challenge," Jackson said. We know what policies work. Countless studies have shown the importance of early childhood education, access to healthcare and guidance counselors, and support for teachers. But the practical, systemic solutions that come out of that body of research are ignored in favor of a political agenda that seeks to privatize and dismantle a public institution that is vital to our nation's economy and democratic well-being.

"A couple of weeks ago, the website Vox.com published an article entitled, "11 facts about U.S. teachers and schools that put the education reform debate in context." The article, in the wake of the Vergara decision, is supposed to provide readers with the "basic facts" about the current education reform environment, with a particular emphasis on teachers. Most of the 11 facts are based on descriptive statistics. Vox advertises itself as a source of accessible, essential, summary information - what you "need to know" - for people interested in a topic but not necessarily well-versed in it. Right off the bat, let me say that this is an extraordinarily difficult task, and in constructing lists such as this one, there's no way to please everyone (I've read a couple of Vox's education articles and they were okay). That said, someone sent me this particular list, and it's pretty good overall, especially since it does not reflect overt advocacy for given policy positions, as so many of these types of lists do. But I was compelled to comment on it. I want to say that I did this to make some lofty point about the strengths and weaknesses of data and statistics packaged for consumption by the general public. It would, however, be more accurate to say that I started doing it and just couldn't stop. In any case, here's a little supplemental discussion of each of the 11 items"

"Robert Schwartz's post today on Huffington, "Why Charters and College Access Programs Should Cream," is but the latest incarnation of Social-Darwinism applied to current public education policy."

"In a recent lecture before the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Harvard law professor Larry Lessig argued that the current infrastructure for scholarly communication is not consistent with the objectives of The Enlightenment (see video of lecture below). Rather, the system is more consistent with the reality of the "elite-nment." That is, for the most part, knowledge created by academics is placed mostly in outlets that can be accessed only by "the knowledge elite.""

After years of work and more than $250 million in federal support, nearly all states and many districts have established longitudinal student data systems for accountability, yet many of those systems, even within the same state, still can't talk to each other, nor easily provide data to answer daily instructional questions from educators and policymakers. The Austin, Texas-based Michael and Susan Dell Foundation is hoping its new Ed-Fi data standard, released this morning, will allow educators and researchers to access information on kindergarten through 12th grade from state and local systems even before the systems have been aligned.

We study the impact of a public school choice lottery in Charlotte-Mecklenburg (CMS) on postsecondary attainment. We match CMS administrative records to the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), a nationwide database of college enrollment. Among applicants with low-quality neighborhood schools, lottery winners are more likely than lottery losers to graduate from high school, attend a four-year college, and earn a bachelor's degree. They are twice as likely to earn a degree from an elite university. The results suggest that school choice can improve students' longer-term life chances when they gain access to schools that are better on observed dimensions of quality.

We study the impact of a public school choice lottery in Charlotte-Mecklenburg (CMS) on postsecondary attainment. We match CMS administrative records to the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), a nationwide database of college enrollment. Among applicants with low-quality neighborhood schools, lottery winners are more likely than lottery losers to graduate from high school, attend a four-year college, and earn a bachelor's degree. They are twice as likely to earn a degree from an elite university. The results suggest that school choice can improve students' longer-term life chances when they gain access to schools that are better on observed dimensions of quality.

The recent reorganization of New Orleans schools offers a unique opportunity to examine differences in the policies and practices of charter and traditional schools. RAND researchers surveyed principals, teachers, and parents in both types of schools. They found higher levels of satisfaction and a perception of more choices among charter school parents. This raises the question of whether citywide school choice is equally accessible and navigable by all.

"Here's a quick data driven post on Governor's state aid cuts - or aid changes. So far, I've been able to compile data from a few states which make it relatively easy to access and download data on district by district runs of state aid (and one state that does not, but I have good sources of assistance). Here, I compare changes in state aid to K-12 public school districts in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York."

If you follow education at all you don't need a database to tell you that there are huge gaps in access to AP classes and resources between students attending schools in rich neighborhoods and those in poor neighborhoods.

The pre-K-3 movement, which refers to the years spanning prekindergarten to 3rd grade, wants to revolutionize early education through an ambitious list of connected initiatives, including universal access to free public preschool, mandatory full-day kindergarten, and curriculum that is seamlessly connected from preschool to 3rd grade. Increasing parent involvement is also a major focus.

With approximately 500 tax-exempt bond transactions completed to date, the charter school sector of the municipal market continues to gain size and momentum and has emerged as much more than a fragmented niche for high yield investors. The growth rate in the number of charter schools across the country - now exceeding 5,000 - is expected to increase due to the heightened focus that policymakers at all levels of government have placed on results-driven education reform. This growth will generate greater charter school demand for affordable facility financing, a demand that is well met by the tax-exempt bond market with its tax-exempt interest rates and longer principal repayment periods. To date, however, fewer than 8% of charter schools have accessed the market for their permanent facility financing needs.

"The so-called Vergara trial in California, in which the state's tenure and layoff statutes were deemed unconstitutional, already has its first "spin-off," this time in New York, where a newly-formed organization, the Partnership for Educational Justice (PEJ), is among the organizations and entities spearheading the effort. Upon first visiting PEJ's new website, I was immediately (and predictably) drawn to the "Research" tab. It contains five statements (which, I guess, PEJ would characterize as "facts"). Each argument is presented in the most accessible form possible, typically accompanied by one citation (or two at most). I assume that the presentation of evidence in the actual trial will be a lot more thorough than that offered on this webpage, which seems geared toward the public rather than the more extensive evidentiary requirements of the courtroom (also see Bruce Baker's comments on many of these same issues surrounding the New York situation). That said, I thought it might be useful to review the basic arguments and evidence PEJ presents, not really in the context of whether they will "work" in the lawsuit (a judgment I am unqualified to make), but rather because they're very common, and also because it's been my observation that advocates, on both "sides" of the education debate, tend to be fairly good at using data and research to describe problems and/or situations, yet sometimes fall a bit short when it comes to evidence-based discussions of what to do about them (including the essential task of acknowledging when the evidence is still undeveloped). PEJ's five bullet points, discussed below, are pretty good examples of what I mean."