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During a hearing in June, as the city's Panel for Educational Policy prepared to move on a plan to "co-locate" 22 charter schools in public-school buildings, most of the audience knew what would happen: Parents would yell, teachers would plead and union members would attack the Bloomberg administration. And then, after hours of testimony in the tightly packed auditorium of a Prospect Heights high school, the plan would pass as expected.

"I don't know where I would be today if my teachers' job security was based on how I performed on some standardized test." That was actor Matt Damon talking to thousands of teachers, parents, principals, school board members and other education activists who stood today for hours in 90-plus-degree temperatures near the White House to protest the standardized testing mania that is at the heart of the Obama administration's school reform policies.

A good seven miles from Gov. Rick Perry's much-anticipated prayer rally, an even larger crowd of Houstonians gathered in preparation for another sacred event: the first day of school. Some families camped out for hours to gain admittance into Houston's first-ever, citywide back-to-school event at George R. Brown Convention Center, where free backpacks, school supplies, uniforms, haircut vouchers, immunizations and fresh produce were provided.

For all the talk about balancing the budget for the sake of our children, keeping classrooms closed is a perverse way of giving them a brighter future. What's needed is more time in classrooms, not less. Our school calendar, with its six-and-a-half-hour day and 180-day year, was designed for yesterday's farm economy, not today's high-tech one.  While many middle-class families now invest in tutoring and extra learning time, less-privileged children are left on the sidelines, which only widens gaps in achievement and opportunity.

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.

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.

Warwick Valley School District leaders are suggesting sending students home an hour early once a month so teachers and principals can implement a new state law requiring staff evaluations. Administrators say they need the extra time to train and certify evaluators, develop a new data analysis process and conduct evaluations under the new state Annual Professional Performance Review regulations.

Using both qualitative and quantitative research methods, we recorded over 50 hours of testimony from students and parents, and administered a survey project that engaged 450 students from six public high schools, yielding over 25,000 student observations. This research initiative represents the most extensive youth-led, student-centered evaluation of New Orleans public high schools since Hurricane Katrina. Our study encompasses Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) and Recovery School District (RSD) schools, both direct-run and charter. In total, 450 students have "raised their hands" through either a survey or interview to express their concerns.

The phone rang, and my stomach clenched when I heard her voice. "Daddy? I want to go home," said my 8-year-old daughter, Arden. Two hours earlier, I dropped Arden and her two siblings off at their new school in a squat building in a forest of Soviet-era apartment blocks on Krasnoarmeyskaya (Red Army) Street in Moscow. They hugged me goodbye, clinging a little too long, and as I rode the metro to my office, I said a kind of silent prayer to myself that they would get through the day without falling apart.

Larry Cuban wrote a wonderful blog post recently, one that I've been planning to discuss in more detail, though now I'm going to bring it up in a way I hadn't originally intended.  In "Jazz, Basketball, and Teacher Decision Making" Cuban offers interesting analogies and scientific studies to illuminate just how complex teaching really is.  Teachers make several dozen instructional decisions every hour, hundreds per day.  For those decisions to be effective in promoting student learning, teachers need to know the difference between the meaningful information and the meaningless "noise" that we take in every second as we observe a classroom.  We need a clear sense of priorities for each student and for each moment - and though this idea will shock some people who barely understand teaching - the top priority is not always to stick to the lesson plan.  (More on that idea in a blog post coming soon).  In order for each decision to be the best it can be, we need to have a variety of options and approaches, and both the theoretical and practical background to weigh those options and make the right selection in a moment's time, and then constantly adjust.

Fred Klonsky blog readers: After watching the fourteen minute excerpt and then viewing the whole video of the hour-long session, I want to very sincerely apologize.

In Washington Heights, graduates of Stuyvesant High School and the Bronx High School of Science run the Science Schools Initiative, a yearlong free tutoring program held for three hours every Saturday morning. To qualify, students must show promise on a diagnostic exam and meet the city's benchmark for poverty. "The whole point of this thing is basically to get economically disadvantaged kids into these schools," said Mr. Cleary, who until recently was the program's executive director. "I'm not looking to hit a certain number; I'm looking for some equilibrium."

The Labor Education Program of the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois conducted surveys of 983 Chicago Public School (CPS) teachers during winter 2011-2012.  In light of the recent debate over the length of the school day, this study offers a profile of a teacher's standard school day workload and the time he/she devotes to the job. Results from this survey revealed that claims that teachers are working "too short a day" are unwarranted at best and intellectually dishonest at worst.