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Legislation creating Maine's first charter schools is headed to Gov. Paul LePage's desk for his signature. After years of failed attempts, advocates for charter schools finally succeeded in receiving legislative support for allowing public schools that must meet state and federal academic standards but are given more flexibility in curriculum, budgeting and other areas.

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.

A student-achievement test under consideration by nearly half the states has been redesigned to ease their concerns that it would cost too much, shape curriculum, and eat up too much instructional time.

Evaluating teachers based on the results of the MCAS test is unfair and counterproductive. The reality is that high-stakes testing continues to narrow the school curriculum and to fragment subjects, as pointed out in a meta-analysis published in "Educational Researcher."

How do you sell a school that doesn't exist? If you are Chris Whittle, an educational entrepreneur, you gather well-to-do parents at places like the Harvard Club or the Crosby Hotel in Manhattan, hoping the feeling of accomplishment will rub off. Then you pour wine and offer salmon sandwiches and wow the audience with pictures of the stunning new private school you plan to build in Chelsea. Focus on the bilingual curriculum and the collaborative approach to learning. And take swipes at established competitors that you believe are overly focused on sending students to top-tier colleges. Invoke some Tiger-mom fear by pointing out that 200,000 Americans are learning Chinese, while 300 million Chinese have studied English. Then watch them come.

This was written by Randy Ross, who was a principal and teacher for over 43 years both in New York City and Great Neck, LI, as well as an assistant superintendent, professor at CCNY's School of Education and director of instruction and curriculum at the North Shore Hebrew Academy in Great Neck. Half of his career was in urban schools, half in suburban, and the last three years have been in private schools and higher education.

While the importance of effective principals is undisputed, few studies have addressed what specific skills principals need to promote school success. This study draws on unique data combining survey responses from principals, assistant principals, teachers and parents with rich administrative data to identify which principal skills matter most for school outcomes. Factor analysis of a 42-item task inventory distinguishes five skill categories, yet only one of them, the principals' organization management skills, consistently predicts student achievement growth and other success measures. Analysis of evaluations of principals by assistant principals confirms this central result. Our analysis argues for a broad view of instructional leadership that includes general organizational management skills as a key complement to the work of supporting curriculum and instruction.

"Over the last ten years, I have worked as a certified English teacher in a high school in Long Island, New York, a suburb of New York City.  I am in my seventeenth year working in public education.  I have taught various courses in four different school districts on Long Island that range from grades six to twelve.  Children and adolescents, whether they are school shooters or gangbangers, do not become violent without cause.  None of them were born violent. I tend to connect the rise in school violence in my suburban school district, 95% of which is African American and Hispanic, to the recent economic downturn and education policy insidiously devoted to teacher, principal and school evaluations tied to standardized testing of students.  These students have been exposed to school curriculum, said testing, and "raised" standards (Common Core) conceived by politicians, economists and billionaires, not professional and long-time education practitioners who would know much, much better how to make our public schools the envy of the world (again).  They have also been victimized by inflexible "zero tolerance" policies with mandatory minimum suspension periods, as well as increased in-school surveillance and security measures that prepare chocolate and caramel students much more for the realities of prison than they do a safe existence."

"In a move seen by some activists as a concession to Chicago's strong anti-testing movement, Chicago Public Schools won't administer the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), a test required by federal mandate as part of the new Common Core curriculum. Instead, the district will test only 10 percent of its 664 schools."

"A number of people have asked me about my brief encounter with New York Commissioner John King at the NYSCOSS Fall Leadership Summit on September 24, 2012. Here is my recollection."

"When charter schools first emerged twenty years ago, they represented a revolution, ushering in a new era that put educational choice, innovation, and autonomy front and center in the effort to improve our schools. While charters have always been very diverse in characteristics and outcomes, it wasn't long before a particular kind of gap-closing, "No Excuses" charter grabbed the lion's share of public attention. But in this rush to crown and invest in a few "winners," have we turned our back on the push for innovation that was meant to be at the core of the charter experiment?"

Today's post continues BookMarks book list series. Enjoy!

Here's a three-step recipe for how to destroy education. It maps perfectly to how to make a prodigious profit by privatizing it. It is the essential game plan of the big money boys.

As the majority of states implement common-core content standards, experts at the National Research Council argue that the focus on mathematics and language arts leaves out the social and economic studies that can help students connect content to their daily lives.

How to improve our schools? Let's start with what we know: Teachers are the most important factor in a child's schooling, and many of our teachers are not very good. But wait a moment. How do we know that? Given the current fascination with education policies that focus on teachers - typically market-oriented policies such as pink slips for bad teachers and bonuses for good ones - it would be wise to make certain that teachers are the problem we think they are.

In his recent State of the State address, Governor Cuomo said he wants to be an advocate for children. Let him lobby to protect their natural curiosity and love of learning from the onslaught of anti-intellectual, ends-oriented teaching practices forced on our educators by over-emphasis on standardized tests.

I have never been asked by an administrator how the work in my class will help to create informed and powerful citizens that can boost the health of our democracy. But isn't that the point of public education? If not that, then what? Shouldn't we come to some consensus about the goal before we create the means towards that end?

As schools are trying to engage students through the use of 21st century skills there are others schools that are still practicing the art of banning books, and Tucson is not the only one. As astonishing as it may seem as we negotiate our way through 2012, there are numerous books that are being banned, or considered for banning, every year.

Arizona is putting in place some of the biggest changes in public schools in two decades. Over the next three years, the reforms will shake up what students learn and when they are promoted, as well as how teachers are evaluated and schools are graded.

The liberals of the education reform movement, often more surreptitiously than the overstated former Washington D.C. Chancellor of Schools during Democratic Mayor Adrian Fenty's term in office Michelle Rhee, have for decades advanced negative assumptions about public school teachers that now power the attacks by Christie, Walker, Kasich and their ilk. This is particularly true of Teach for America (TFA), the prototypical liberal education reform organization, where Rhee first made her mark. The history of TFA reveals the ironies of contemporary education reform. In its mission to deliver justice to underprivileged children, TFA and the liberal education reform movement have advanced an agenda that advances conservative attempts to undercut teacher's unions. More broadly, TFA has been in the vanguard in forming a neoliberal consensus about the role of public education-and the role of public school teachers-in a deeply unequal society.