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The administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in a blunt acknowledgment that thousands of young black and Latino men are cut off from New York's civic, educational and economic life, plans to spend nearly $130 million on far-reaching measures to improve their circumstances.

Each year millions of middle-school students nationwide spend angst-filled months waiting to hear if they scored high enough on an entrance exam to attend a selective public high school. In New York City alone more than 27,000 students apply for precious spots in the three best-known schools: Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Technical and Bronx High School of Science. What Mr. Dobbie and Mr. Fryer wanted to know was just how much of a difference attending one of these high schools makes in the long run for students with similar equal admissions test scores.

Yes it is time to rethink teacher education. However, I recommend we start where future teachers take the bulk of their coursework -- in schools of arts and sciences and in schools of liberal arts. My fellow teacher educators and I can't spend an entire semester trying to reteach all the content from the disciplines and also help future teachers understand how this knowledge translates into material to be introduced to children in pedagogically powerful ways.

Speakers at a packed rally Wednesday called Mayor Allan W. Fung's plan for a new charter school a mistake and urged him to spend money on the city's neglected public schools instead.

Investments in high-quality early childhood programs, particularly those targeted to children at risk, are not just a virtuous service, but can yield a large return for those paying the bill. Study after study has proved that such programs, coupled with training for parents, result not only in economic gains for the children as they grow up, but sizable savings on taxes. For example, graduates from these preschool programs are less likely to need special education, end up being arrested fewer times and spend less time in prison (which means fewer crime victims), require fewer social services, are healthier and wind up paying more in taxes.

Attorney and whistleblower Kathleen Carroll was fired by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing CTC in September 2010 after she began to expose the systemic corruption and cronyism at the agency. The commission plays a critical role in education in California certifying teachers and also approving education training programs. Carroll discovered that Agency officials and the board members were also involved in planning the systemic destruction of public education in California and how this agency operated to carry out this role. They were involved in spending millions of dollars on private charter schools that some staff had personal interests in. The commission managers also bullied the staff and created a reign of terror at the agency. This commission is also under the direct control of the Executive and Governor Jerry Brown but he has remained silent about the scandal.

In a New York City middle school, the principal asked teachers to spend fifteen minutes a day with students practicing how to answer multiple-choice math questions in preparation for the state-mandated test. One teacher protested, explaining she taught Italian and English, not math. But the principal insisted, and she followed his directive. As you might suspect, the plan failed, and in the end, fewer than one in four New York City middle schoolers passed the exam. While the importance of the test dominated the formal curriculum, the lessons learned through the hidden curriculum were no less powerful. Students learned that test scores mattered more than English or Italian, and that teachers did not make the key instructional decisions. In fact once the test was over, one-third of the students in her class stopped attending school, skipping the last five weeks of the school year.

Many education reform advocates are pushing to lengthen the school day, not only as a way to increase teaching time and offer extra instruction and enrichment, but also to accommodate working parents. Charter programs like the KIPP schools have promoted the longer day, and it is being accepted by some urban public schools, notably in Chicago. When and where does it make sense to institute a longer school day, and how should it be designed? While this change may benefit children from disadvantaged backgrounds, providing a social support system, would it help other American students if they had to spend more time in school, given what we know about how they learn?

Colorado taxpayers will spend $100 million this year on online schools that are largely failing their elementary and high school students, state education records and interviews with school officials show.

Headlines from Alabama tell us that the latest "education reform" there is making sure we know exactly how much the state is spending to educate the children of "illegal" immigrants. According to a new law, parents are required to present documentation when registering their children to attend school. While the law does not require school officials to turn in the names of "illegals," it has sparked widespread fear among immigrant parents, and many have withdrawn their children from school. Meanwhile, Texas governor Rick Perry's poll numbers in the Republican primary have fallen after he said that members of his party who do not support free education for students who are undocumented "have no heart."

So--let's say you're a teacher. Not "just a teacher," but one of those special teachers we hear about in news and policy discussions-- the supposedly rare educator who has passionate disciplinary expertise, a toolbag full of teaching strategies and genuine caring for their students. You're in education because you want to make a difference, change the world, raise the bar. You actually love teaching, finding it endlessly variable and challenging. You plan to spend a long time in the classroom.

There's been a surge in attention paid to edu-philanthropy of late, especially with Sam Dillon's piece in the New York Times in May and Bill Gates' WSJ interview this summer. The condemnations of "corporate philanthropy" and of philanthropists giving away tens of millions as "MBAs run amok" fly hot and heavy. I think the critics are mistaken and way too quick to hurl accusations here. I don't remember them raising concerns about the pernicious influence of grantors when the Ford Foundation bankrolled litigation to boost edu-spending or when the Annenberg Challenge pumped $500 million into a mash-up of ineffectual mid-1990s reforms that educators happened to like.

KIPP, Inc. offers a draconian test factory model that specializes in its own patented varieties of behavioral sterilization and cultural neutering.  KIPP's Madison Avenue advertising campaign focuses on KIPP test scores, which are often higher than public school scores.  But then spending 60 percent more time in school drilling within a total compliance regime that regularly shoves out low performers has its own kinds of perverse rewards.

American policy makers and pundits are in love with some foreign education systems and are working hard to bring their policies and practices home. Others have national standards and a uniform curriculum, so should America (Chester E. Finn, Julian, & Petrilli, 2006). Students in China and India spend more time in schools, so should American children (Obama, 2009). Other countries use national exams to sort students, so should America (Tucker, 2011). Teachers in other countries receive more training in content, so should teachers in America (Tucker, 2011). "Teachers in Singapore are appraised annually" and "our current evaluation system is fundamentally broken," so America must fix teacher evaluation and hold them accountable for raising student test scores (Duncan, 2010).

Seventeen-year-old Kevin Fish has won international mountain bike races, has ridden alongside Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong and hopes to become a professional cyclist when he turns 19. To do that, he trains 20 hours a week: four-hour bicycle rides, long runs and practice on a stationary bike. Spending seven hours a day in traditional private or public schools would leave Kevin riding in the evenings - or not at all, depending on homework. Then his family read about Star Charter School on the Web. The campus, which received the highest academic rating under the state accountability system, offers small classes and four-hour days. And as an open-enrollment charter school, it is public and tuition-free.

Some Twitter followers may have noticed the ongoing back and forth regarding the validity of the recent Monmouth University Poll on education reform.I'd certainly rather spend my time on more substantive discussion. As I've noted on many occasions, polls are what they are. They ask what they ask. And the responses to the questions must always be evaluated only with respect to what was asked. Questions about specific policies in particular require that the policies in question be described correctly. This is a point raised the other day by Matt Di   Carlo about the Monmouth Poll here. Yesterday, Patrick Murray, director of the polling institute posted a response to some of the criticisms levied against the recent Monmouth poll. Unfortunately, I found his response to be much less fulfilling and in many ways far more disturbing than the poll itself. Quite honestly, I'd have left this issue alone if not for some particularly troublesome assertions made by the polling institute director Patrick Murray.

"Test scores are an inadequate proxy for quality because too many factors outside of the teachers' control can influence student performance from year to year - or even from classroom to classroom during the same year. Often, more than half of those teachers identified as the poorest performers one year will be judged average or above average the next, and the results are almost as bad for teachers with multiple classes during the same year. Fortunately, there's a far more direct approach: measuring the amount of time a teacher spends delivering relevant instruction - in other words, how much teaching a teacher actually gets done in a school day. "

At a dinner party, you're not supposed to talk politics or religion. Although Miss Manners never forbid it, chatting about how to save money in special education may as well have been included in that list of taboo topics, too. After all, cost can't be a consideration when deciding what services a student with a disability needs.

States and districts would get unprecedented leeway to move around federal money under the latest in a series of bills to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. But the measure is already being decried by a top Democrat as a "backdoor" way to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and as an attack on students' civil rights.

"Nine months ago, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced a $100 million gift to improve public schools in Newark, N.J. The plan to spend the money is now taking shape, and a new superintendent is coming on board to lead the effort. But in New Jersey, initial jubilation over the gift has turned into protests, suspicion and a belief that students will never benefit from the money."