Group items tagged

Just days after negotiations broke down between the city and the teachers' union, UFT President Michael Mulgrew, gave his side of what happened and why it's costing the city nearly $60 million in federal grants, in an interview with Inside City Hall's Errol Louis.

If there ever was an online bastion for right-of-center Democrats, it's Huffington Post. Their education reporting is abysmal in terms of both editorial content and policy advocacy. Their choice of bloggers heavily favors privatization minded charter-voucher swindlers. With a few notable exceptions, including Dr. John Thompson and Larry Ferlazzo, Huffington Post functions as shills for charters, vouchers, and other Freidman fantasies for converting the commons to commerce.

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."

Last week, the Education Week Teacher online site reported on a new study that used federal wage, benefit, and job-security data, along with measures of cognitive ability, to argue that teachers are overpaid compared to what they would earn in the private sector. The study, authored by Andrew G. Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Jason Richwine, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, challenged the refrain that teachers are, in the words of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, "desperately underpaid." I suppose it's because Biggs is a colleague of mine at AEI, but many have wondered about my thoughts on the study.

The New England Common Assessment Program is on its way out in New Hampshire. The state Department of Education is planning to implement a new standardized test system to measure reading and math proficiency starting in 2013-14, said Paul Leather, deputy commissioner of education. The state will discontinue using the NECAP for reading and math after one more round of testing in October, and then roll out the Smarter Balanced Assessment the next school year. Leather described the new test a stronger assessment with no increased cost.

Middle and high school counselors believe they have a unique and powerful role to play in preparing all students for good jobs or college, but they feel hamstrung by insufficient training, competing duties, and their own schools' priorities, according to a study released today. The online survey of 5,300 counselors was conducted this past spring for the College Board's Advocacy & Policy Center. One of the largest-ever surveys of counselors, it paints a picture of a committed but frustrated corps that sees a deep schism between the ideal mission of schools and the work that takes shape day to day.

Chris Cerf, the acting commissioner of education in New Jersey, published an article today defending charter schools, which have become very controversial in his state. They have become controversial because the state is trying to push them into suburbs that have great public schools and don't want them, and they have become controversial because the public is beginning to revolt against for-profit charters, especially for-profit online charters, which Cerf is promoting.

After spending more than $80 million on a controversial online student achievement database, the NYC Department of Education's portal is about to become obsolete as the state rolls out its own nearly-identical system as part of a federal education grant, DNAinfo.com New York has learned. The city is quietly making the transition from its $81 million data system - known as ARIS, or "Achievement Reporting and Innovation System" - to a new statewide database being developed with federal education funding, according to officials and city and state documents.

A summary of the public comment and the response by NYSED for their waiver application from NCLB is now posted online; presumably the application will be voted on by the Regents Monday or Tuesday. NYSED says it received "over 50 submissions from "persons associated with Class Size Matters" and over twenty submissions from individuals associated with the principals' letter, signed by over one third of New York's principals, objecting to the new teacher evaluation being developed by the state.  Yet the NYSED summary responded substantively to none of our concerns, as expressed in our earlier letter.

The latest serving of data-driven mania from the city Education Department will likely produce screaming headlines about the city's "worst teachers." This virtual wall of shame (and fame) will live online for years to come. But does it actually help parents to find the best schools and teachers? Not really. Here's why. The ratings are based on a complicated formula that compares how much 4th through 8th-grade students have improved on standardized tests compared with how well they were predicted to do. The system tries to take into consideration factors like race, poverty and disabilities. Teachers are then graded on a curve. It's known as "value-added," because it tries show how much value an individual teacher has added to a student's test scores. Here are our top five reasons they won't help and why you won't be seeing them on Insideschools. Please add your own, or tell us why you think they will be useful.

"A group of expert researchers have published a new collection of articles about teacher evaluation and high-stakes testing and their consequences. The collection appears online in the Teachers College Record. It is called "High-Stakes Teacher Evaluation: High Cost, Big Losses.""

The ability to measure cost effectiveness in education, and convince parents and educators that it's in their best interest, will determine the future of online education, according to a paper authored by the American Enterprise Institute's Frederick M. Hess.

Fordham is launching a series of working papers on digital learning.  Rick Hess makes an important contribution with the first paper focused on quality (posted tomorrow).

Decades in the making, Terry Moe's Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America's Public Schools appears destined to be the definitive scholarly work on the subject. Mike Petrilli talks with Moe about the book, the union's rise to power, their influence on all facets of our education system, and whether changes within Democratic Party politics-and the emergence of online learning-create existential threats to these organizations.

Please join us for Education Reform Idol, where leaders from five cutting-edge states will battle for the honor of "Reformiest State 2011." This Fordham Institute panel will pit Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin against one another in what should prove to be the biggest education policy event this summer. The winner will be determined by a vote of the in-person and online audience.

Officials say online testing further reduces the ability to tamper with students' results

If memory serves, the old TV show Hart to Hart used to begin with the narrator intoning, "And when they met, it was murder." Well, earlier this week AFT honcho Randi Weingarten and I engaged in a hard-hitting but genial debate at the Fordham Institute. Within a couple hours, we experienced the most severe East Coast earthquake in sixty-plus years. A coincidence? You decide. The Oprah-style affair, titled "When Reform Touches Teachers," was adeptly hosted by Fordham's Mike Petrilli. You can catch the video online here or when it shows on C-SPAN.

This was written by Will Miller, president of The Wallace Foundation, an independent, national foundation that works to expand learning and enrichment opportunities for children. The foundation maintains an online library of lessons at www.wallacefoundation.org.

In this changing environment, CEP researchers will do our best to keep you updated on each state's status. The map contains links to the online sources from which we drew our information about the most recent development in that state.

THE TEACHER SALARY PROJECT encompasses a feature-length documentary film, an interactive online resource, and a national outreach campaign that delves into the core of our educational crisis as seen through the eyes and experiences of our nation's teachers. This project is based on the New York Times bestselling book Teachers Have It Easy by journalist and teacher Daniel Moulthrop, co-founder of the 826 National writing programs Nínive Calegari, and writer Dave Eggers. American Teacher is produced by Eggers and Calegari, produced and directed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Vanessa Roth, and narrated by Matt Damon.