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"This was written by Carol Burris and Harry Leonadartos. Burris is the principal of South Side High School in Rockville Centre, New York.  Leonadartos is the principal of Clarkstown High School North in Rockland County, New York. Carol is the co-author and Harry is an active supporter of the New York Principals letter of concern regarding the evaluation of teachers by student scores."

"Pity the new district superintendent. Like any responsible educational leader, he'd like to be sure that his district's curricular materials and interventions are grounded in solid scientific research. But no sooner does he start talking with his staff, his teachers, and various and sundry "experts" than he finds that everything is "research-based," including approaches that are clearly very different from those employed by his teachers. Should he let well enough alone, or should he introduce programs that seemed to work fine in the last district he was in? Neither. Instead, he should go read Dan Willingham's ingenious new book, When Can You Trust the Experts? The book won't tell him which programs to use, but it will help him think through -- and, in some cases, see through -- the claims their creators make on their behalf. An accomplished cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia and the author of the must-read Why Don't Students Like School? (as well as an NCTQ advisory board member), Willingham aims to make district superintendents, principals, teachers and parents into educated consumers of education research."

A number of charter schools have moved to block the youngest students from enrolling in kindergarten even though they're eligible to attend under city rules - a policy that's backed by the city's Department of Education. Despite city rules that say any child who turns 5 by Dec. 31 of a given year is eligible to enroll in public school, charter authorizers - including the DOE - have allowed some schools to quietly push up their cutoff entry date to as early as Aug. 31. The move leaves the youngest batch of 5-year-olds - who education experts say often struggle the most academically - to either sit out a year or attend traditional district schools, even though charter schools are fully taxpayer-funded.

Guided by the assumptions that charter schools will be part of our public educational system for the foreseeable future; that charter schools are neither inherently good, nor inherently bad; and that charter schools should be employed to further goals of equal educational opportunity, including racial diversity and school success, this policy brief addresses the challenge of using charter school policy to enhance equal opportunity.  Part I of the brief provides an overview of equal educational opportunity and its legal foundations and offers a review of prior research documenting issues concerning charter schools and their impact on equity and diversity. Part II presents detailed recommendations for charter school authorizers, as well as state and federal policymakers, for using charter schools to advance equal educational opportunity. The accompanying legal brief offers model language designed to augment existing charter school laws by adding language particularly aimed at ensuring that charter schools serve as a vehicle of reform consistent with the value of equal educational opportunity. 

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and several other governors across the country have bought into an education-reform plan that won't work, a nationally recognized education adviser and author told members of the Louisiana School Boards Association on Thursday. Diane Ravitch, who says she once supported vouchers, charter schools and standardized testing for grading schools, says she reversed her opinions when she found "they don't work." "It's the wrong way to go," she said. "Public education is in a state of crisis, in a fight for survival."

About 20 percent of principals new to a school leave that posting within one or two years, leaving behind a school that generally continues on a downward academic slide after their departure, according to a study released last week by the RAND Corp. on behalf of New York City-based New Leaders. "The underlying idea is that churn is not good," said Gina Schuyler Ikemoto, an author of the report and the executive director of research and policy development for New Leaders, formerly known as New Leaders for New Schools. The nonprofit group recruits and trains principals to work in urban districts. However, the answer is not as simple as just allowing or encouraging those principals to remain in place, she said. "In some cases, the solution is to give folks more time," Ms. Ikemoto said, but policymakers should make sure they're selecting the very best candidates for those positions from the start.

District 15 parents, legal advocates and other supporters from the community held a press conference outside of 284 Baltic Street, between Court and Smith Streets, Wednesday morning to announce their intention to sue founder and CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools Eva Moskowitz, Brooklyn Success Academy III Trustees and the DOE over the alleged unlawful authorization of the charter school. The impassioned speeches were as chilly as the temperature on the sidewalk. "The Success Charter Network and Eva Moskowitz with the participation of the SUNY Board of Trustees have unlawfully co-located in this building in violation of the school's charter and charter law," said Sabrina Tann, senior staff counsel for Advocates for Justice.

Gov. Jindal has submitted a legislative proposal that would offer vouchers to more than half the students in the state; vastly expand the number of privately managed charter schools by giving the state board of education the power to create up to 40 new charter authorizing agencies; introduce academic standards and letter grades for pre-schoolers; and end seniority and tenure for teachers. Under his plan, the local superintendent could immediately fire any teacher-tenured or not-who was rated "ineffective" by the state evaluation program. If the teacher re-applied to teach, she would have to be rated "highly effective" for five years in a row to regain tenure. Tenure, needless to say, becomes a meaningless term, since due process no longer is required for termination. The bill is as punitive as possible with respect to public education and teachers. It says nothing about helping to improve or support them. It's all about enabling students to leave public schools and creating the tools to intimidate and fire teachers. This "reform" is not conservative. I would say it is radical and reactionary. But it is in no way unique to Louisiana.

This was written by education historian Diane Ravitch, a research professor at New York University and author of the bestselling "The Death and Life of the Great American School System."

Michael Fabricant and Michelle Fine's (2012) book Charter Schools and the Corporate Makeover of Public Education: What's at Stake? analyzes the state of public education by examining the charter school movement and determining how its record compares with its promises. Fabricant and Fine, as contributors to the larger body of literature concerning public education and educational policy, are both well positioned to understand the complexity and importance of the current charter school movement and its effects on public education. The book is well written and succinctly organized; the authors discuss an important and relevant issue facing public education: They posit that the current trend toward privatizing education manifested in the charter school movement is shortsighted and is not supported by compelling evidence. Fabricant and Fine offer a thorough examination of the charter school movement, the competing interests of involved parties, and the effects on students, parents, and communities.

"If you were thinking of ponying up $20 to buy Jonathan Kozol's latest book, Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America, don't bother. EduShyster has it on EXCELLENT authority that the book suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks. While I haven't actually read Fire in the Ashes, I know someone who has-Teach for America foundress Wendy Kopp-and she thought it was a real dud. You see Kozol has spent the past 642 years writing about the scourge of poverty among America's children, racial segregation in the public schools and inequities in education funding-all of which we now know DO NOT MATTER AT ALL. In fact just by mentioning these non-mattering factors Kozol is practically a one man excuse factory."

"If you remember your No Child Left Behind history, 2014 is the year that all children were supposed to be scoring proficient on standardized tests. That was, of course, a ridiculous goal, which the authors of the bill knew full well when they wrote it, and a symbol for just how misguided school reform has become. Here, George Wood, superintendent of Federal Hocking Local Schools, offers four things that reform really should be targeting. He is the executive director of the Forum for Education and Democracy  and board chair of The Coalition of Essential Schools."

"I recently published a post about how a teacher in New York was wronged by the state's controversial new educator evaluation system, which is based in large part on student standardized test scores. Here's a story about a school principal's personal experience with the scores. This was written by Sean C. Feeney, principal of The Wheatley School in New York and president of the Nassau County High School Principals Association. He is a co-author of  the New York Principals letter of concern regarding the evaluation of teachers by student test scores. It has been signed by more than 1,535 New York principals and more than 6,500 teachers, parents, professors, administrators and citizens."

"If you have heard the phrase "no excuses" charter schools but don't really know what they mean, here is an informative post about  them and the controversial philosophy under which they approach student discipline and achievement.  Joan Goodman, a professor in the Graduate School of Education University of Pennsylvania and director of the school's Teach For America program, explains her research on these charter schools to freelance journalist and public education advocate Jennifer Berkshire, who worked for six years editing a newspaper for the American Federation of Teachers in Massachusetts and who authors the EduShyster blog, where this Q * A originally appeared. Goodman is a former school psychologist whose article "Charter Management Organizations and the Regulated Environment: Is It Worth the Price?" appeared in the March 2013 issue of Educational Researcher."

"...For those involved in policy matters, this book will, if you let it, unsettle you. Most involved in policy are addressing matters around the edges, even if they do confront matters of poverty and background. Perhaps you will find yourself disagreeing with some of what the authors present. Fair enough, but can you then as a reader and a policy maker come up with reasons for not addressing the issues with which they challenge you? Do not all of us-teachers, parents, administrators, policy makers-owe our children, our students, a willingness to think beyond our current practices so that we can do the best job possible of preparing them to take responsibility for the world which we will leave them?..."

"Jonathan Alter and Diane Ravitch our special guests to debate education reform. In a Bloomberg column, Alter called out Diane as one of the obstructionists to education reform. Jonathan Alter is a journalist and author who was a columnist and senior editor for Newsweek magazine from 1983 until 2011. Alter is currently a lead columnist for Bloomberg Review. Diane Ravitch is a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Previously, she was a U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education."

"Most teachers and principals will tell you that non-instructional school staff can make a big difference in school performance. Although we may all know this, it's always useful to have empirical research to confirm it, and to examine the size and nature of the effects. In this paper, economists Scott Carrell and Mark Hoekstra put forth one of the first rigorous tests of how one particular group of employees - school counselors - affect both discipline and achievement outcomes. The authors use a unique administrative dataset of third, fourth, and fifth graders in Alachua County, Florida, a diverse district that serves over 30,000 students. Their approach exploits year-to-year variation in the number of counselors in each school - i.e., whether the outcomes of a given school change from the previous year when a counselor is added to the staff."

Jay Mathews, a longtime education reporter at the Washington Post and author of its Class Struggle column, is the rare journalist who seems to like telling hopeful stories. Decades ago he wrote Escalante: The Best Teacher in America, about the teacher who was later featured in the movie Stand and Deliver. And now he's written another cheerful profile, this time of Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, the founders of the uber-successful KIPP schools. This week, Mike Petrilli talks with Jay about his book, Work Hard, Be Nice, about what KIPP means for the larger education reform debate, and whether Hollywood has bought the rights to his story. (An excerpt of Work Hard, Be Nice, was published in the Spring 2009 issue of Education Next.)

In case it needs reiterating, Matt Damon is actually a pretty smart guy. He holds a Best Original Screenplay Oscar. He went to Harvard. He produces documentary films. He volunteers and donates to whole host of NGOs and non-profits. Sure, he's no authority of education, but he's probably the kind of person worth at least giving the benefit of the doubt.

I had a twitter argument the other day about a blog posting that compared the current debate around "de-selection" of bad teachers to eugenics. It is perhaps a bit harsh to compare Hanushek  (cited author of papers on de-selecting bad teachers) to Hitler, if that was indeed the intent. However, I did not take that as the intent of the posting by Cedar Riener.  Offensive or not, I felt that the blog posting made 3 key points about errors of reasoning that apply to both eugenecists and to those promoting empirical de-selection of fixed shares of the teacher workforce.