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The Education Department will spend about $5 billion on the program, and even if you're thinking, hey, I could use $5 billion, consider this: New York won the largest federal grant, $700 million over the next four years. In that time, roughly $230 billion will be spent on public education in the state. By adding just one-third of one percent to state coffers, the feds get to implement their version of education reform. That includes rating teachers and principals by their students' scores on state tests; using those ratings to dismiss teachers with low scores and to pay bonuses to high scorers; and reducing local control of education.

Ensuring that all students in America's public schools are taught by good teachers is an educational and moral imperative. The teacher is the most important school-based influence on student achievement, and poor children and those of color are less likely to be taught by well-qualified, experienced, and effective teachers than other students. Yet teacher incentive proposals - including those promoted by President Obama's Race to the Top program - are rarely grounded on what high-quality research indicates are the kinds of teacher incentives that lead to school excellence and equity. Few of the current approaches to creating teacher incentives take into account how specific conditions influence whether or not effective teachers will work in high-need schools and will be able to teach effectively in them. This review of research finds little support for a simplistic system of measuring value-added growth, evaluating teachers more "rigorously", and granting bonuses. Instead, the brief supports four recommendations: use the current federal Teacher Incentive Fund to attract qualified, effective teachers to high-needs schools, expand incentives by creating strategic compensation, create working conditions that allow teachers to teach effectively, and more aggressively promote the best practices and policies that spur school excellence and equity. The accompanying legal brief offers legislative language to implement these recommendations.

Ten years into the federalized accountability era designated as No Child Left Behind, one fact of education is rarely mentioned (except by people who do spend and have spent their lives actually teaching children day in and day out): Since 1983's A Nation at Risk, and intensified under NCLB, teachers have systematically been de-professionalized, forced by the weight of policy and bureaucracy to implement standards they did not create, to prepare students for tests they did not create (and cannot see, and likely do not support), and to be held accountable for policies and outcomes that are not within their control.

Much like the brief torrential rain which drenched New Yorkers on Thursday morning, Mayor Bloomberg's Thursday afternoon State of the City Address received a deluge of media attention. Today, the print and electronic media feature talk of his jeremiad against the UFT, of his attempted resurrection of 'market reforms' such as merit pay which have been discredited even in 'reform' circles, as study after study has shown them ineffective, and of his claims that he will introduce a new evaluation system by fiat. Tellingly, nowhere will you read an account of what the Mayor's proposed imposition of closure under the Turn-Around model would mean for the PLA schools, were he to be successful in implementing it. Consider what is happening to just a few of the PLA schools. Note that we use here the performance data that, the DoE insists, informs their decisions on the future of schools.

Say Yes to Education, Inc. announced today announced that The Wallace Foundation has committed to investing more than $4.2 million in Say Yes over the next three years to support the implementation of Say Yes Syracuse and support the development of tools that share lessons learned from Say Yes' City-Wide Turnaround Strategy.

"Would I send my child to this school?" This is a question I asked myself every day while working at Achievement First and helping to build their first high school in Brooklyn, NY in 2009 and 2010. I served as the Director of Student Life at Achievement First Crown Heights High School (now called AF Brooklyn High School), which entailed developing and managing all after-school and summer enrichment programs, building the advisory system for both college skills and character development, counseling students, and organizing and leading community events each week to contribute to school culture. As a member of the founding team, I was involved in almost every aspect of the school, from hiring, to behavior management, to building systems for school culture and discipline, to working with others in the Achievement First network to find and implement best practices for our new school.

The undersigned education, civil rights, religious, children's, disability, and civic organizations are committed to the No Child Left Behind Act's objectives of strong academic achievement for all children and closing the achievement gap. We believe that the federal government has a critical role to play in attaining these goals. We endorse the use of an accountability system that helps ensure all children, including children of color, from low-income families, with disabilities, and of limited English proficiency, are prepared to be successful, participating members of our democracy. While we all have different positions on various aspects of the law, based on concerns raised during the implementation of NCLB, we believe the following significant, constructive corrections are among those necessary to make the Act fair and effective.

Chilean students have taken over schools and city streets in the largest protests the country has seen in decades. The students are demanding free education, and an end to the privatisation of their schools and universities. The free-market based approach to education was implemented by the military dictator Augusto Pinochet in his last days in power.

In response to low take-up, many public schools have experimented with moving breakfast from the cafeteria to the classroom. We examine whether such a program increases performance as measured by standardized test scores, grades and attendance rates. We exploit quasi-random timing of program implementation that allows for a difference-in-differences identification strategy. Our main identification assumption is that schools where the program was introduced earlier would have evolved similarly to those where the program was introduced later. We find that in-class breakfast increases both math and reading achievement by about one-tenth of a standard deviation relative to providing breakfast in the cafeteria. Moreover, we find that these effects are most pronounced for low performing, free-lunch eligible, Hispanic, and low BMI students. We also find some improvements in attendance for high achieving students but no impact on grades.

Class Size Matters has done a detailed analysis of the trend in student achievement in NYC since 2003, when Mayor Bloomberg's educational policies were first implemented, as measured by the NAEPs - the national assessment carried out every two years by the federal government in 4th and 8th grade English and math.  

A series of studies from Roland Fryer and colleagues have explored the effectiveness of specific charter school models and strategies, including Harlem Childrens' Zone (Dobbie & Fryer, 2009), "no excuses" charter schools in New York City (Dobbie & Fryer, 2011), schools within the Houston public school district (Apollo 20) mimicking no excuses charter strategies (Fryer, 2011, Fryer, 2012), and an intensive urban residential schooling model in Baltimore, MD (Curto & Fryer, 2011).  In each case, the models in question involve resource intensive strategies, including substantially lengthening school days and years, providing small group (2 or 3 on 1) intensive tutoring, providing extensive community based wrap around services (Harlem Childrens' Zone) or providing student housing and residential support services (Baltimore). The broad conclusion across these studies is that charter schools or traditional public schools can produce dramatic improvements to student outcomes by implementing no excuses strategies and perhaps wrap around services, and that these strategies come at relatively modest marginal cost. Regarding the benefits of the most expensive alternative explored - residential schooling in Baltimore (at a reported $39,000 per pupil) - the authors conclude that no excuses strategies of extended day and year, and intensive tutoring are likely more cost effective. But, each of these studies suffers from poorly documented and often ill-conceived comparisons of costs and/or marginal expenditures.

I was intrigued by this post from Jay Greene today, in which he points out that public schools can learn from charter schools and perhaps can implement some of their successes. Specifically, Greene is referring to KIPP-like "no excuses" charter schools as a model, and their strategies for improving outcomes including much extended school time (longer day/year).  As the basis for his argument, Greene refers specifically to Roland Fryer's updated analysis of Houston's Apollo 20 schools - which are - in effect, models of no excuses charters applied in the traditional public district.

Test scores are the coin of the educational realm in the United States. No Child Left Behind demands that scores be used to reward and punish districts, schools, and teachers for how well or poorly students score on state tests. In pursuit of federal dollars, the Obama administration's Race to the Top competition has shoved state after state into legislating that teacher evaluations include student test scores as part of judging teacher effectiveness. Numbers glued to high stakes consequences, however, corrupt performance. Since the mid-1970s, social scientists have documented the untoward results of attaching high stakes to quantitative indicators not only for education but also across numerous institutions. They have pointed out that those who implement policies using specific quantitative measures will change their practices to insure better numbers.

As the Indiana Department of Education implements an ambitious and far-reaching agenda, its leader is spending much of his time on the road extolling voucher programs, charter schools and collective bargaining limits to special-interest groups in other states. News coverage suggests the first-term Republican is the go-to state official for school reform tactics pushed by right-leaning organizations.

Unfortunately, the proposed Treasury Department regulations, if adopted as currently written, would make it very difficult for state and local teacher plans to admit charter schools and retain their governmental plan status. Indeed, if these regulations are implemented as written, the prudent course of action for any state or local plan administrator, faced with possibility of losing governmental status, would be to throw charter schools out of the plan.

School districts across Long Island say the cost of implementing the federal Race to the Top initiative outstrips the monetary awards. Some are opting out, rejecting the funding to free themselves of the obligation.

Unlike many of my colleagues and friends, I personally support the use of standardized testing results in education policy, even, with caution and in a limited role, in high-stakes decisions. That said, I also think that the focus on test scores has gone way too far and their use is being implemented unwisely, in many cases to a degree at which I believe the policies will not only fail to generate improvement, but may even risk harm. In addition, of course, tests have a very productive low-stakes role to play on the ground - for example, when teachers and administrators use the results for diagnosis and to inform instruction. Frankly, I would be a lot more comfortable with the role of testing data - whether in policy, on the ground, or in our public discourse - but for the relentless flow of misinterpretation from both supporters and opponents. In my experience (which I acknowledge may not be representative of reality), by far the most common mistake is the conflation of student and school performance, as measured by testing results.

South Side High School Principal Dr. Carol Burris has co-authored a letter, signed by two thirds of Long Island's public school principals and a growing number of educators from across New York state, asking state education Commissioner John B. King Jr. and the Board of Regents to delay and change a new teacher evaluation plan that links educator ratings to student test scores. The letter, co-authored with Sean Feeney of The Wheatley School and sent on Nov. 2, urges the state to use school-wide achievement results in evaluating teachers and principals, pilot and adjust the system before implementing it on a large scale and use performance "bands" - not numbers - to rate education professionals.

If ever proof were needed for the notion that it's a good idea to look before you leap, it's the implementation of Race to the Top in Tennessee. "I don't know why they felt they had to rush," said Tim Tackett, a member of the school board here who was a teacher and principal for 32 years. "Clearly this wasn't well thought out."

Last spring, when I was teaching at a small school in the Bronx, I caused an unnecessary ruckus by posting my thoughts about a presentation my staff received on the looming impacts of PARCC and Common Core implementation. The post was shared by Gotham Schools, in the Digest for Grassroots Education, and was disseminated to many UFT chapter leaders. I discovered soon afterward that my words were seriously concerning to a number of senior DOE employees, including, apparently, Chancellor Walcott and Deputy Chancellor Suransky.