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What builds a solid teacher? The right setting, a sense of calling, a zeal for learning, and a renewable energy source.

Chicago Public Schools officials Thursday did an abrupt about-face on implementing a controversial teacher-applicant test and said TeacherFit scores would no longer be used to automatically blacklist potential teachers.

If you're a parent, you've probably experienced a certain degree of fear at some point or another about your kids using the Internet. Maybe you peer over their shoulders while they check their Facebook pages, or try to catch glimpses of IM conversations they have with their friends. But do you worry about how they communicate online with their teachers? A new Missouri state law makes the case that you should.

Diane Ravitch's speech at AERA.

Key findings from this study include the following: Achievement on state reading and math tests has improved for Title I students in most states with sufficient data. Gaps between Title I and non-Title I students have narrowed more often than they have widened since 2002, although trends were less encouraging at grade 4 than at grade 8 or high school.  When gaps narrowed, it was most often because achievement improved at a faster rate for Title I students than for non-Title I students. The size of achievement gaps between Title I and non-Title I students varied greatly among states but was often smaller than gaps for low-income students or for certain racial/ethnic groups.

Report from National Center for Education Information

America's Children, America's Challenge Promoting Opportunity for the Next Generation The Annie E. Casey Foundation

Late this Friday afternoon, only 4 days before the law was scheduled to go into effect, word came that a judge in Missouri has issued an injunction against implementation of the Missouri anti-social networking (Facebook) law between teachers and students. Here is a local story on it (thanks to my good friend Dave Doty @canyonsdave). Also, thanks to the Missouri State Teachers' Association, who filed the suit, for following up on twitter with their press release.  First, this is just a preliminary injunction. This is not a final judgment and the matter is still to be decided. 

Since the early 1970s, the rich, corporate power brokers and right-wing cultural warriors realized that education was central to creating a viable populist movement that served their interests. Over the last 40 years, the financial elites and their wealthy accomplices have not only mobilized an educational anti-reform movement in the name of "reform" to dismantle public education and turn it over to hedge-fund managers and billionaires; they have also taken a lesson from the muckrakers, critical public intellectuals, left-wing journals, progressive newspapers and educational institutions of the mid-20th century and developed their own cultural apparatuses, talk shows, anti-public intellectuals, think tanks and grassroots organizations. As the left slid into organizing around mostly single-issue movements since the 1980s, the right moved in a different direction, mobilizing a range of educational forces and wider cultural apparatuses as a way of addressing broader ideas that appealed to a wider public and issues that resonated with their everyday lives. Tax reform, the role of government, the crisis of education, family values and the economy, to name a few issues, were wrenched out of their progressive legacy and inserted into a context defined by the values of the free market, an unbridled notion of freedom and individualism and a growing hatred for the social contract.

"Education historian and outspoken education policy analyst Diane Ravitch joined her Education Week blogging partner Deborah Meier, who is recognized as a leading advocate for personalized and intellectually-challenging schools for "Bridging Differences Live" on April 27, 2011 at Indiana University. Presented by the IU School of Education and the Meier Institute at Harmony Education Center in Bloomington, the event was a moderated discussion hosted by IU School of Education Communications and Media Relations Director Chuck Carney."

There is widespread awareness that there is a very substantial gap between the educational achievement of the White and the Black population in our nation, and that the gap is as old as the nation itself. This report is about changes in the size of that gap, beginning with the first signs of a narrowing that occurred at the start of the last century, and continuing on to the end of the first decade of the present century. In tracking the gap in test scores, the report begins with the 1970s and 1980s, when the new National Assessment of Educational Progress began to give us our first national data on student achievement. That period is important because it witnessed a substantial narrowing of the gap in the subjects of reading and mathematics. This period of progress in closing the achievement gap received much attention from some of the nation's top researchers, driven by the idea that perhaps we could learn some lessons that could be repeated.

Last year, Washington Post education reporter Bill Turque made clear what he thought of how his paper's editorial board covered then-Washington, D.C., schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. In a blog post, Turque wrote that the Post's editorial support for Rhee had been "steadfast, protective and, at times, adoring." The item was quickly removed from the Post's website, but Turque is hardly alone in his views.

They say it's all about great teachers and principals....