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On June 29th 2011, two of the most important people in the current ed reform debate squared off for a 'discussion' at the Aspen Ideas Festival.  As they are opposed on many of the vital issues, this had the makings of a heavyweight title fight.

The National Education Association's warm corpse has gone rigid. Any hint of a pulse has dissipated with its needless and early endorsement of President Barack Obama. If ever there was a time to negotiate against No Child Left Behind or Race To The Top, this would have been it, more than a year before the presidential election.

Certain aspects of Teach For America's selection process appear to be linked to student achievement gains-a sign that it's possible to recruit candidates who are more likely to have an edge in the classroom, a new study concludes.

A Brooklyn high school co-founded by Borough President Marty Markowitz is one of the most dangerous places to learn, a new Education Department survey shows.

There's been a hot debate raging over in the higher education world about plagiarism, and who really suffers from efforts to stamp it out.

In a series of posts inspired by one of Jeff Henig's recent guest posts for Rick Hess Straight Up, I'd like to explore the concept of data-driven instruction over the next few days, why it's become so suddenly all the rage in low-achieving schools, and its promises and pitfalls. I intend on doing this especially by relating my experiences with data-driven instruction, exploring the culture and systems that bore it, and soliciting feedback from other educators who have similar and divergent perspectives.

A recent response to my previous post on these pages helps to underscore one of my central points: If there is no clarity about what it will take to improve schools, it will be difficult to design a system that can do it.

Despite fewer delegates than previous years-just about 9,000, down from 10,000-the National Education Association's annual convention is still the largest delegated decision-making body in the world.

This letter was sent today to Claudio Sanchez, the reporter and Edward Schumacher Matos, the NPR ombudsperson.

"There's an article in this month's Wired Magazine about Khan Academy. The headline speaks volumes - "How Khan Academy Is Changing the Rules of Education" - as do the responses I've seen to the article. As usual, there's plenty of praise for Sal Khan and his one-man-educational-video-making machine. But there's also push-back from some quarters, particularly from educators who are highly skeptical of what Khan Academy delivers and what it stands for."

Cohen's argument on the importance of infrastructure does not necessarily mean that we should abandon the testing of new evaluation systems, only that we should be very careful about how we interpret their results and the policy conclusions we draw from them (which is good advice at all times). Unfortunately, however, it seems that caution is in short supply.

The Walton Family Foundation will invest $49.5 million in the national Teach For America over three years, according to a release from the Bentonville, Ark.-based nonprofit organization.

"Diane Ravitch's (2010) critique of the standardized achievement testing apparatus has not been refuted, but it has been criticized for failing to present an alternative. Likewise, proponents of standardized achievement testing, although conceding, "it has its flaws," respond "there is no better way." This commentary sketches a Plan B alternative that is supported by contemporary events and by Educational R&D resulting from the original Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965."

Mayor Bloomberg's comments on his Friday radio show that tenure "may have been necessary in the McCarthy era" but is now a relic of the past highlight how out of touch he is with the current realities of the school system.

From my perspective, there are two MVPs in the current reform debate: Bruce Baker and Matt DiCarlo. I have enormous respect for Matt. He commands a great deal of information about a complex topic, he has a strong grasp of research methods, and he has the ability to distill the thorny language of academic research into writing that lay people can not only understand, but use to inform themselves about this critical debate. Which is why I am so very, very disappointed in his latest post

We caught up with Mr. Brill, a resident of Bedford since 1981, last Friday, before he was to launch the East Coast portion of his book tour.

When the new book 'Class Warfare' came out, the story of the current ed reform movement featuring TFA and KIPP, I refused to buy it, since I didn't want anyone to profit from passing fiction and fantasy off as non-fiction. But when I received a complimentary copy as a gift from my frequent debate opponent, Whitney Tilson, I promised that I would, at least, read it. Analyzing a short research paper or an hour long debate is one thing, but a 500 page book - well, I was hoping that I wouldn't find much to say about it since I really don't have the time, yet I can't resist.

Recent data shows anti-union school "reformers" hoisted on their own petard. After insisting that test scores should be the chief measure of schools, a flurry of recent test results has refuted claims that non-union charter schools exceed unionized public ones.