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Pearson Education Inc., the company that holds all three state contracts for Oklahoma school tests, did not accurately calculate the test scores of high school students at the school and district levels, The Oklahoman reported Monday (http://bit.ly/qCqYzd). Though individual test scores are believed to be accurate, the company's mistakes affect the numbers used to determine how schools perform under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Check out this letter sent Wednesday to NY State Education Commissioner King, from the UFT, Class Size Matters,  NAACP & AQE, pointing out the numerous legal flaws as regards this year's Contracts for Excellence (C4E) process.

A Bronx charter school has reached an agreement with the city's teachers union, signing a contract that would grant the teachers and staff at the school modest wage increases and expanded job protection, but unlike their counterparts in unionized city schools, no provision for tenure.

"In the charter-school sector, this arrangement is known as a "sweeps" contract because nearly all of a school's public dollars 2013 anywhere from 95 to 100 percent 2013 is "swept" into a charter-management company. The contracts are an example of how the charter schools sometimes cede control of public dollars to private companies that have no legal obligation to act in the best interests of the schools or taxpayers."

Hawaii is already in big trouble with the U.S. Department of Education for failing to hit key milestones the state promised to deliver as part of its $75 million Race to the Top prize. At stake is roughly $72 million that's left of the state's award, which federal officials are threatening to take back. Things were looking up in the Aloha State, when earlier this month the state and its teachers' union reached a tentative contract deal to end the stalemate and put in place a new teacher-evaluation system based in part on student growth-a key component of its Race to the Top plan. Hawaii's rank-and-file teachers had other ideas.

Outlined in a new contract in 2009, delineated in the 2009-10 school year, and implemented in 2010-11, TEVAL, as the system is known, requires at least three "professional conferences" between an instructional leader performing classroom observations and each teacher. The conferences help to home in on areas on strength and weakness and provide a path for improvement. The system also integrates student-achievement results. TEVAL is only part of the district's three-pronged improvement efforts, but it's emblematic of New Haven's commitment to reform in partnership with its teachers' union.

"The state Education Department is poised to award a $27 million no-bid contract to a company former city Schools Chancellor Joel Klein oversees, the Daily News has learned. The money - part of the state's $700 million in Race to the Top winnings - will go to Wireless Generation, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., to develop software to track student test scores, among other things."

Providence teachers on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly to approve a three-year contract that guarantees that every fired teacher will be returned to the district in exchange for substantial concessions.

More than a dozen private firms wanted to work on a project like the one the state Education Department is set to award to a Rupert Murdoch-owned company in a $27 million no-bid contract.

The Panel for Educational Policy on Wednesday approved a $120 million contract with a Verizon subsidiary to provide phone and Internet services for two years at city schools, despite calls for postponing the vote and boisterous protests over Verizon's possible role in federal theft charges against an Education Department consultant.

A bombshell report by the Nutter administration on the backroom political dealings of State Rep. Dwight Evans and former School Reform Commission Chairman Robert L. Archie Jr. over a school contract fell flat Friday with City Council members, who called the men's behavior the stuff of everyday politics in Philadelphia.

My interest was sparked by a June, 2011 notice on Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's website of a $500,000 grant to the Future Is Now Schools, (FIN) a charter schools management organization founded by Steve Barr. FIN has been recently re-branded (some say divorced) from the LA-based Green Dot Public Schools, founded by Barr, and from Green Dot America, an effort by Barr to open charter schools nationally. The purpose of the grant is "to provide national support for the use of a scaled-down collective bargaining contract and to amplify the voice of reform-minded teachers in select cities by sharing organizing expertise."

The state Education Department should reconsider the $27 million no-bid contract it awarded a firm connected to Rupert Murdoch's scandal-scarred News Corp. empire, critics charged yesterday.

The City Council hopes a new bill approved this month will shine a brighter spotlight on the billions of dollars New York City spends hiring outside contractors for city agencies-all of them, that is, except the largest and most expensive, the Department of Education.

"The rescue of public education must come from the grassroots, from a coalition led by parents and teachers. Such a movement has been taking shape gradually and gained visibility during the 2012 election cycle. The number of education-related campaigns has increased as ed reformers try to entrench their policies in law. In addition to the familiar battles over school funding, there are votes on charter schools, the content of teacher contracts, vouchers, and union rights (the four largest unions in the United States represent teachers and other public sector workers). Disregarded in the past, elections for school boards and superintendents have become major battles. This year's education votes were high-profile within individual states, fiercely fought, and outlandishly expensive; some attracted national attention. Public education supporters won some impressive victories and suffered several bitter disappointments. Here is a review of some pivotal votes, who supported what, and why"

Are charter schools public? Are they private? Are they somewhere in between? There is a lively debate in the education community over these questions. Charter advocates claim that charter schools are, of course, public schools, with all the democratic accountability that this entails. The only difference, they say, is that charters are public schools with the freedom and space to innovate. On the other side, charter critics argue that contracting with the government to receive taxpayer money does not make an organization public (after all, no one would say Haliburton is public) and if a school is not regulated and governed by any elected or appointed bodies answerable to the public, then it is not a public school. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) was recently forced to weigh in on this question. It came out with a clear verdict that charter schools are not, in fact, public schools.

The Philadelphia school district could close as many as 64 schools and eliminate hundreds of central office jobs in the next few years. A sweeping reorganization proposal made public Tuesday includes more than half a billion dollars in budget cuts by 2017. It's called "A Blueprint for Transforming Philadelphia's Public Schools" and it includes a proposal to divvy up the remaining schools among "achievement networks" led by teams of educators or nonprofit institutions. The achievement networks would have 20 to 30 schools each and be connected by either geography or a common, creative approach to teaching and learning. The leaders of the network, which could include successful principals, would have contracts based on performance and be required to serve students of all abilities and situations equitably, reports thenotebook.org.

The recent Pineapple and the Hare fiasco does more than identify a daft reading passage on New York State's 8th grade English Language Arts test. Education Commissioner John King scrapped the selection and its six multiple-choice items, admitting they were "ambiguous," when the questions became public last week. The episode opens the door to discussing how the 2012 exams were put together. The State Education Department signed a five-year, $32 million agreement with NCS Pearson to develop English Language Arts and math assessments in grades three to eight. In fact, math testing was administered over three days this week for 1.2 million students. Pearson has grown immensely over the last decade, securing contracts with many states required to test students under the No Child Left Behind Act. This year it succeeded CTB/McGraw-Hill as New York's test vendor.

The SAS Educational Value-Added Assessment System (SAS® EVAAS®) is the most widely used value-added system in the country. It is also self-proclaimed as "the most robust and reliable" system available, with its greatest benefit to help educators improve their teaching practices. This study critically examined the effects of SAS® EVAAS® as experienced by teachers, in one of the largest, high-needs urban school districts in the nation - the Houston Independent School District (HISD). Using a multiple methods approach, this study critically analyzed retrospective quantitative and qualitative data to better comprehend and understand the evidence collected from four teachers whose contracts were not renewed in the summer of 2011, in part given their low SAS® EVAAS® scores. This study also suggests some intended and unintended effects that seem to be occurring as a result of SAS® EVAAS® implementation in HISD. In addition to issues with reliability, bias, teacher attribution, and validity, high-stakes use of SAS® EVAAS® in this district seems to be exacerbating unintended effects.

Philadelphia school "recovery" officials have announced a radical restructuring plan that calls for: * closing 40 low-performing, underutilized schools in 2013 and a total of 64 more by 2017 * organizing "achievement networks" of about 25 schools that would be run by outsiders who bid for management contracts * increasing the number of charter schools, which now educate about 25 percent of the city's roughly 200,000 students * effectively shutting down the central office, which is already half the size it was last year * phasing out all academic divisions now in place by this summer, with pilot achievement networks in place as early as this fall.