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Here's Helen Gym's letter to Philadelphia Chief Recovery Officer Thomas Knudsen, who recently announced a plan that will radically restructure the city's public schools by closing 40 schools next year and more after that, and replacing the central office with "achievement networks" run by outsiders who would bid for contracts.

I learned that the tests themselves are being kept secret because the state Department of Education and Pearson, their test development contractor, wrote strong confidentiality provisions into the contract. My understanding is that this was so that they both could reuse test questions in the future. In order for the questions to be re-usable, they have to be kept secret, otherwise students could prep too easily for the tests, and Pearson's other customers would be able to get the tests from the public domain. We only know about the gaffes because students exposed them. Educators have been sworn to secrecy.

The breakthrough experiment in New Haven offers a glimpse of an education future that is less rancorous. It's a tribute to the savvy of Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers and as shrewd a union leader as any I've seen. She realized that the unions were alienating their allies, and she is trying to change the narrative. New Haven may be home to Yale University, but this is a gritty, low-income school district in which four out of five kids qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. Eighty-four percent of students are black or Hispanic, and graduation rates have been low. A couple of years ago, the school district reached a revolutionary contract with teachers. Pay and benefits would rise, but teachers would embrace reform - including sacrificing job security. With a stronger evaluation system, tenure no longer mattered and weak teachers could be pushed out. Roughly half of a teacher's evaluation would depend on the performance of his or her students - including on standardized tests and other measures of learning. Teachers were protected by a transparent process, and by accountability for principals. But if outside evaluators agreed with administrators that a teacher was failing, the teacher would be out at the end of the school year.

This is an open letter written by Larry Lee after he sat through a meeting of the Alabama House Ways & Means Education Committee last week during a hearing on HB541, a bill known as the "Education Options Act of 2012." Lee, of Montgomery, is the former executive director of the Covington County Economic Development Commission and the West Central Partnership of Alabama. He writes often about education. HB541 is intended to: * Allow local school systems to have more flexibility by entering into a contract with the Alabama Department of Education that allows flexibility from state laws, including state Board of Education rules, regulations, and policies, in exchange for academic and assorted goals. * Authorize the establishment of public charter schools in the state, which current has none.

While the school's founding administration fought unionization, new administrators say they're ready to work with teachers on a contract.

A state Senate committee approved legislation Thursday that would allow charter schools to refuse to admit students on the basis of their ability to speak English, their sexual orientation or other factors.

New York City Department of Education officials said late Monday that they were pulling back on a clause in contracts for testing companies that list 50 words and topics that they should avoid in creating new tests.

A venerable maxim of successful organizational management declares that an executive's authority should be commensurate with his or her responsibility. In plain English, if you are held to account for producing certain results, you need to be in charge of the essential means of production. In American public education today, however, that equation is sorely unbalanced. A school principal in 2012 is accountable for student achievement, for discipline, for curriculum and instruction, and for leading (and supervising) the staff team, not to mention attracting students, satisfying parents, and collaborating with innumerable other agencies and organizations. Yet that same principal controls only a tiny part of his school's budget, has scant say over who teaches there, practically no authority when it comes to calendar or schedule, and minimal leverage over the curriculum itself. Instead of deploying all available school assets in ways that would do the most good for the most kids, the principal is required to follow dozens or hundreds of rules, program requirements, spending procedures, discipline codes, contract clauses, and regulations emanating from at least three levels of government--none of which strives to coordinate with any of the others. In short, we give our school heads the responsibility of CEO's but the authority of middle-level bureaucrats.

Our guest author today is Dr. Clifford B. Janey, former superintendent for the Newark Public Schools, District of Columbia Public Schools, and Rochester City School District. He is currently a Senior Weismann Fellow at the Bankstreet College of Education in New York City, and a Shanker Institute board member. For too many students, families, and communities, the high school diploma represents either a dream deferred or a broken contract between citizens and the stewards of America's modern democracy. With the reform movement's unrelenting focus on testing and its win/lose consequences for students and staff, the high school diploma, which should signify college and work readiness, has lost its value. Not including the over seven thousand students who drop out of high school daily, the gap between the percentage of those who graduate and their readiness for college success will continue to worsen the social and income inequalities in life.

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation is pleased to share its latest annual Sponsorship Accountability Report, Two Steps Forward, One Step Back. The sixth of its kind, the report reflects on Ohio's charter school policy environment and the performance of Fordham sponsored charter schools - in terms of absolute achievement, growth, and adherence to goals set forth in our authorizing contract - as well as developments in state law over the year. Despite some tough battles during the state budget as it relates to holding authorizers (and operators) accountable, overall Fordham and its schools had an encouraging year, with Fordham sponsored-charters making achievement gains and positioning themselves to do even better in the future.

NCTQ has made some big changes to our TR3 database, where you can compare the local policies and state laws governing teachers in over 100 school districts in the United States.  This database allows you to compare districts on almost any factor that affects teachers. We've pulled this data from state laws, teachers' contracts, school board policies, school calendars, salary schedules, and teacher evaluation handbooks and more. We've sorted through thousands of documents so you don't have to.

I always cringe when I hear so-called reformers say poverty is "no excuse" for lack of student achievement. It is not because I don't subscribe to that belief, but because I know politicians will use that message as an excuse for not "leveling the playing field" for poor children. To believe that you can treat and fund all schools in the same way meets what many call the definition of insanity--doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. From collective bargaining contracts to federal law, poverty has to be a factor in every decision that affects the education of poor children and those who educate them.

This is a 20 minute mini-documentary about the Rochester City School District Board of Education contracting with Ray & Associates, Inc.--an expensive, corporate superintendent search firm with ties to the Eli Broad Superintendents Academy--and the community's struggle and response to such attacks on public education. The piece begins with an explanation of the vote last month on October 27, 2011 and shows what happened this month at the November 28, 2011 Ad Hoc Superintendent Search Committee. Enjoy!

Uh oh! The speculators are speculatin' and the short-sellers are short selling. K-12 Inc. stock is in free-fall and Andy Rotherham at Eduwonk (who denies holding any shares) sound downright panicky and hedgey. While he is not currently contracting with K-12, his Bellweather consulting company has done work with them in the past. The stock market is to edu-profiteers like Rotherham, what standardized test scores are to DOE bureaucrats and big-city mayors, indicators of their future employment and marketability.

Public education in New Jersey has been roiled recently by conflicts over charter schools, vouchers and "virtual" schools - but, now, a new type of privatization is on the horizon: allowing public schools to contract with a private company to offer "alternative" education.

Hawaii teachers delivered a stunning message Thursday. By a 2-1 margin, they rejected a proposed six-year deal that had the unanimous backing of union leadership. The turnout was huge, with 9,000 of the state's 12,500 teachers voting. "Obviously we're disappointed," said Donalyn Dela Cruz, spokeswoman for the governor. "We have some concerns. Race to the Top was a big motivator in making sure there was a fair, tentative agreement and tomorrow we'll see what are our next steps. The state will move forward and look at all of our options to ensure that our focus remains on Hawaii's children."

The new regulations also allow for the disclosure of PII, without student or parent consent, where institutions have contracted with organizations to conduct studies or audits of the effectiveness of education programs.

Today, Rachel Monahan reported in the Daily News that the DOE is going forward with a contract for Joel Rose's new company to run the School of One in NYC public schools. Joel Rose devised and ran the "School of One" for DOE, a much-hyped online program to teach middle school math, starting in the summer of 2009.  Rose has had a pretty standard trajectory for a corporate reformer: he started as a TFA recruit, then worked for seven years at Edison charter schools under Chris Cerf, moved over to DOE as Cerf's chief of staff in 2006, and started the "School of One" as a summer school program in a few middle schools.

Privatizing the government is one of the most active projects of the early 21st century. Everything we once expected the government to do - from education to regulatory rule-writing to military operations to healthcare services to prison management - it now does less of, preferring to support markets in which these services are done through independent, profit-maximizing agents. Tools such as contracting out, vouchering and the selling-off of state assets have been used to remake the government during our market-worshipping era.

As the Chicago Public Schools begin what are certain to be contentious contract talks with the Chicago Teachers Union, Mayor Rahm Emanuel emerged as the star of a new online video criticizing the union and promoting charter schools, whose teachers mostly are not unionized. An interview with Mr. Emanuel is a highlight of the 35-minute video, produced by the Michigan-based Education Action Group Foundation and the Fox News political analyst Juan Williams. Mr. Williams narrates the video, saying the union is "radically politicized" and is "repeatedly providing terrible examples for Chicago's schoolchildren."