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Jack Schneider of Carleton College has written a clear, original, thought-provoking book about three significant strands in the fabric of contemporary school reform:  the "small schools" movement, Teach For America, and the Advanced Placement program.  In the process, he manages both to emphasize how in his estimation they are improving public schools and to highlight some of the ironies involved in their implementation.  Not until his concluding chapter, however, does he really come to grips with their most significant vagaries and limitations.

I thought we had it bad in Jersey. But, bad as this is, Connecticut may be worse

This study examined five instruments used to assess the effectiveness of teacher practices based on classroom observations. The study first examined whether observers could reliably assess teachers with each instrument, and then examined how well each instrument, along with other information, predicted student achievement.

Summer 2011 Be sure to read the article on Following the Charter Dollars

My comments will focus on the role TFA has played in union busting and wage compression in the public sector. In the last few years TFA has encouraged,or at least passively accepted, a pattern of school districts firing veteran teachers and replacing them with TFA corps members.

For all the contention brought about by the O.W.S. protests, most observers and commenters agree that the movement's one success has been to shift the national conversation-inasmuch as there is one-to words like "poverty" and "inequality." Still, since the early occupations, calls for the protesters to give specifics to underline their shouting have resounded. And in the months of occupation, the financial and political structures that created and support such drastic inequality have been widely reported on and scrutinized. One, though-the privatization of public education, in the name of reform-has received less attention.

So many of the proposals put forth by reformers come from billionaires who have never taught a day in public schools. But because they have deep pockets, their ideas are given credence far beyond their value.

President Obama hosted an education roundtable at the White House on Monday and I'll give you one chance to guess who wasn't high on the guest list. Educators.

In prominent Hollywood movies and even in some research studies, New York City (NYC) charter schools have been held up as unusually successful. This research brief presents a new study that analyzes the resources available to those charter schools, and it also looks at their performance on state standardized tests

'It's hard to improve public education-that's clear. As Warren Buffett would say, if you're picking stocks, you wouldn't pick this one." Ten years into his record-breaking philanthropic push for school reform, Bill Gates is sober-and willing to admit some missteps.

Who benefits financially from the pro-market charter school movement?

The pace at which the highest-performing charter-management organizations are "scaling up" is being determined largely by how rapidly they can develop and hire strong leaders and acquire physical space, and by the level of support they receive for growth from city or state policies, say leaders from some charter organizations viewed by advocates as successful.

Just 2 days before the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action took place at the Ellipse on the US Capitol Grounds, Bill Gates was speaking in front of the National Urban League's annual conference on July 28, 2011.  His topic was "Education As a Civil Right".  In his speech he promoted the brave new world's philosophy of  CHOICE through the privatization of public schools.  

Mike Petrilli takes the Fordham Institute in new directions

Tim Eller, spokesman for the state Department of Education, said the state is engaging schools in a three-part pilot program of a teacher evaluation system that relies heavily on value-added measures -- a controversial yardstick that uses student test scores to determine the "value" teachers add to student knowledge over the course of a year. The idea has grown in popularity since President Barack Obama expressed his support for the system during the federal Race to the Top education funding competition last year.

Public education has never been so divided, between those like Dr. Tisch, Commissioner John B. King Jr. and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg who support the Obama administration's signature Race to the Top initiative and its emphasis on standardized tests and charter schools; and dissenters on the board, who call it a Race to the Bottom and put their faith in teachers as well as traditional public schools. The Race to the Bottom folks warn that the supposedly free fellows come at a stiff political price.

The grant is the largest yet to the California charter schools group and the biggest of its kind from the nonprofit set up by the founders of the Wal-Mart Corp.

The National Bureau of Economic Research just published "School Choice, School Quality and Postsecondary Attainment" by David J. Deming, Justine S. Hastings, Thomas J. Kane and Douglas O. Staiger. Tom Kane, of course, heads the Gates Foundation's $400 million dollar "Measuring Effective Teaching" experiment, and yet his work provides little or no support for the policies preferred by Gates and other "reformers." In fact, the study confirms the judgments of teachers and education researchers who the accountability hawks condemn as the "status quo." If Gates and Kane had had any idea that their research would yield the results reported in this and other recent papers, it is hard to believe they would have started down their market-driven path.

The Boston School Committee approved a historic agreement last night to establish greater cooperation between the city and independent charter schools, in an effort to provide more students across the city with a stronger education. A key component of the agreement calls for the city's school system and the more than dozen charter schools - autonomous public schools overseen by the state - to share innovative educational practices that are getting results in boosting student achievement.

Last October, a friend called with a question: "What do you know about Stand for Children?" The advocacy organization, based in our hometown of Portland, Ore., was expanding into his state of Illinois, and he hoped to glean some insight into the kinds of reforms the group would support. Just two months later, Stand's Illinois branch had amassed more than $3 million in a political action committee and unveiled an aggressive teacher evaluation bill.