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In New York City public schools, a student's educational outcomes and opportunity to learn are statistically more determined by where he or she lives than their abilities, according to A Rotting Apple: Education Redlining in New York City, released by the Schott Foundation for Public Education. Primarily because of New York City policies and practices that result in an inequitable distribution of educational resources and intensify the impact of poverty, children who are poor, Black and Hispanic have far less of an opportunity to learn the skills needed to succeed on state and federal assessments. They are also much less likely to have an opportunity to be identified for Gifted and Talented programs, to attend selective high schools or to obtain diplomas qualifying them for college or a good job. High-performing schools, on the other hand, tend to be located in economically advantaged areas.

Now, in the midst of the latest controversy, it has become clear that ALEC has also played a major role in writing the so-called "parent trigger" laws designed to allow charter management organizations to engage in hostile takeovers of public schools. Interestingly, the web page on the ALEC site which contained the model "parent trigger" law has been taken down, out of the fear, one would presume, that increased public attention on ALEC and its role in promoting reactionary, anti-public education legislation could become a tad bit embarrassing. But the good folks at ALEC Exposed, a virtual clearinghouse on all matters ALEC sponsored by the Center for Media and Democracy, have a library of all the draft ALEC education legislation, and there one finds the missing ALEC model "parent trigger" legislation.

There is much handwringing about low educational attainment in the United States these days. We hear constantly about U.S. rankings on assessments like the international PISA tests: The United States was 14th in reading, 21st in science, 25th in math in 2009, for example. We hear about how young children in high-poverty areas are entering kindergarten unprepared and far behind many of their classmates. Middle school students from low-income families are scoring, on average, far below the proficient levels that would enable them to graduate high school, go to college, and get good jobs. Fewer than half of high school students manage to graduate from some urban schools. And too many poor and minority students who do go on to college require substantial remediation and drop out before gaining a degree. There is another story we rarely hear: Our children who attend schools in low-poverty contexts are doing quite well. In fact, U.S. students in schools in which less than 10 percent of children live in poverty score first in the world in reading, out-performing even the famously excellent Finns.

As the incomes of affluent and poor families have diverged over the past three decades, so too has the educational performance of their children. But how exactly do the forces of rising inequality affect the educational attainment and life chances of low-income children? In Whither Opportunity? a distinguished team of economists, sociologists, and experts in social and education policy examines the corrosive effects of unequal family resources, disadvantaged neighborhoods, insecure labor markets, and worsening school conditions on K-12 education. This groundbreaking book illuminates the ways rising inequality is undermining one of the most important goals of public education-the ability of schools to provide children with an equal chance at academic and economic success.

Last week the New York Times provided valuable, disturbing information by reporting recent research on the growing educational achievement gap between rich and poor students, which has grown substantially over the past few decades, even while the achievement gap between black and white students has narrowed. As the author of one study put it, "family income appears more determinative of educational success than race." Yet, as is often true of the Times, what it gives with one hand, it takes with the other. For example, as the media watchdog group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has long documented, while the paper of record frequently provides factual information about events, its interpretation of the facts buttresses against drawing the "wrong" conclusions about political-economic power relationships.

Most teachers in the US not only voted for President Obama, they spent considerable time and money campaigning for him. Like many other Americans, they thought the Obama presidency would bring new initiatives to help working families and help people rise out of poverty after 8 years of policieswhich favored large corporations and concentrated wealth among top earners. However, they were shocked when President Obama appointed Arne Duncan, a man who had never been a teacher, as Secretary of Education,and when policies began emanating from the new administration favoring charter schools over public schools, requiring student test scores as a basis of teacher evaluation, and encouraging "school turnaround"strategies which led to mass firing of teachers. Worse yet, the rhetoric emanating from Mr Duncan often portrayed "bad teachers" ratherthan deeply entrenched poverty, as the reason for race and class inequities in educational achievement, and for poor US performance globally on standardized tests, a concern heightened when Mr Duncan praised the mass firing of teachers in Central Falls Rhode Island and called Hurricane Katrina " the best thing that had happened to education in New Orleans" because it allowed local officials to replace public schools with charter schools

In a recent blog post, Larry Cuban muses about the enthusiasm of some superintendents, school board members, parents, and pundits for expensive, new technologies, such as "iPads, tablets, and 1:1 laptops." Without any clear evidence, they spend massively on the newest technology, expecting that "these devices will motivate students to work harder, gain more knowledge and skills, and be engaged in schooling." They believe such devices can help students develop the skills they will need in a 21st century labor market-and hope they will somehow help to narrow the achievement gap that has been widening between rich and poor. But, argues Cuban, for those school leaders "who want to provide credible answers to the inevitable question that decision-makers ask about the effectiveness of new devices, they might consider a prior question. What is the pressing or important problem to which an iPad is the solution?" Good question. Now, good enough? I am not so sure. It still implicitly assumes an iPad must be a solution to some-thing in education.

Eric Hanushek testifies in school finance cases. Again, and again, and again. Thirty-some years ago in the Maryland (Hornbeck) case and most recently in the Colorado (Lobato) case. And each time, Hanushek, an economist at the Hoover Institution, testifies to the same position: increased funding for K-12 schools will not improve their effectiveness; court-ordered remedies that cost money will not improve the lot of poor students or English Language Learners or anyone else for that matter. Hanushek is nothing if not a believer in the unconditional truth emanating from his regression equations. But of course, those equations have not always been as clear cut in their implications as some might believe. In 1997, Hanushek published an article in which he argued that a summary of dozens and dozens of correlation studies proved that teacher experience is unrelated to their students' achievement-the financial implications being obvious.

As the poor get poorer, and college tuitions keep rising, the media declare that no one without a B.A. qualifies for a living wage. Something's rotten in this proposition. It isn't that way in Finland, for example. Finland didn't do it overnight, but they built their education system around critical democratic habits: competence and trust. They didn't trade off one for the other. Looking for a trust-proof solution is the fragile error. David Remnick says it well in the March 12th New Yorker: Democracy, he writes: "At best, it's an ambition, a state of becoming," and "the fragility of democratic aspiration is a brutal fact of history." Every time we try an end-run around it we at best distract ourselves from useful next steps, and more often undermine our own aspirations.

Yes, teacher tenure needs reform, but state Sen. Teresa Ruiz's bill places too much weight on the teacher evaluation system under development in New Jersey. Firing teachers based on two consecutive years of poor evaluations is not going to improve teacher effectiveness or student achievement.

The most interesting part of the new Condoleezza Rice-Joel Klein report, which bemoans how American national security is threatened by the poor state of public education, is not in the body of the document itself. The real story is in the dissents at the end of the report. You can read the report here, and then find out all of the many problems with it in the dissenting views attached at the end of the report, which was written by several members of the Council of Foreign Relations task force. Some of the dissenters - including Linda Darling-Hammond and Randi Weingarten - express such broad disagreement with the actual thesis that national security is threatened by our public schools, as well as with some of the recommended solutions, that one could wonder why they agreed to stay on the commission and put their names to the document. Here's why: To ensure that their viewpoint was at least included somewhere in the document.

In the years since the publication of "Silenced Dialogue" and the 1995 book it inspired, Other People's Children, the standards-and-accountability school reform movement rose to prominence. Its focus on closing the achievement gap through skills building echoed many of Delpit's commitments, but she found herself troubled by the movement's discontents. Many low-income schools canceled field trips and classes in the arts, sciences and social studies, for example, in order to focus on raising math and reading standardized test scores. Now Delpit is responding in a new book, "Multiplication is for White People": Raising Expectations for Other People's Children. (The title quote comes from an African-American boy who, bored and discouraged by the difficulty of his math assignment, proclaimed the subject out-of-reach for kids like himself.) "I am angry that the conversation about educating our children has become so restricted," Delpit writes in the introduction. "What has happened to the societal desire to instill character? To develop creativity? To cultivate courage and kindness?" Here, in an interview with The Nation, Delpit discusses the intelligence of poor children, how she would reform Teach for America, and why college professors should be as focused on closing the achievement gap as K-12 educators are. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

You know what one of my great pet peeves is? When prominent people, who are granted a prominent place in our society's discourse, cite "research" without telling us what that research is. Case in point: Newark Superintendent of Schools Cami Anderson: Research shows that effective teachers put students on an entirely different life trajectory - toward college, a higher salary, even a more stable family life. I am committed to ensuring that we have a strong teacher in every classroom and great leader in every school. Based on my 20-plus years in education, I know we must significantly change how we recruit, select, develop and retain our educators. [...] Some research shows that we lose our best teachers to charter schools and other professions because they feel they are not growing and they become disheartened seeing students in ineffective classrooms. After multiple poor ratings validated by several people, we should presume that these few teachers are ineffective and partner with the union to manage them out - efficiently. [emphasis mine] I would dearly love to see this "research." I would love to evaluate it for myself and decide whether it's think-tanky nonsense or serious work done by serious people. But I can't, can I? Because Anderson won't tell me what it is, and the Star-Ledger thinks it's enough for her to cite it without checking it for themselves.

Usually when you visit a school you walk down a quiet hallway and peer in the little windows in the classroom doors. You see one teacher talking to a bunch of students. Every 50 minutes or so a chime goes off and the students fill the hallway and march off to their next class, which is probably unrelated to the one they just left. When you visit The New American Academy, an elementary school serving poor minority kids in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, you see big open rooms with 60 students and four teachers. The students are generally in three clumps in different areas working on different activities. The teachers, especially the master teacher who is floating between the clumps, are on the move, hovering over one student, then the next. It is less like a factory for learning and more like a postindustrial workshop, or even an extended family compound.

The state's top education official today defended the Christie administration's proposed changes to the school funding formula, including a plan to spend less money on poor students.

Question: Why do wealthy kids usually do better in school than poor kids? Answer: Disadvantaged children face a host of challenges to academic success. These challenges fall into two broad categories.

Lamenting that millions of American children receive "a third world education," Mitt Romney on Wednesday called for poor and disabled students to be able to use federal funds to attend any public, private or online school they choose.

The NJ Department of Education (NJDOE) under Acting Commissioner Christopher Cerf is gearing up to intervene in 75 predominately Black and Latino "Priority" Schools, action that could lead to massive school closings within three years. The schools targeted by NJDOE for closure are in very poor neighborhoods across the state and have served these communities for decades. The NJDOE plan for "aggressive intervention" and potential school closures is the centerpiece of a new "accountability" initiative launched by the Christie Administration after obtaining a U.S. Department of Education waiver from certain provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2011. The waiver allows NJDOE to use test scores and graduation rates to create three new classifications of schools: "Priority," "Focus" and "Reward."

Poor school districts are being forced to cut electives, remedial tutoring, foreign languages and other programs and services to balance budgets. Many schools in less prosperous areas face what the state commissioner of education calls "educational insolvency." The obvious losers are students, who will be less prepared for graduation, college and their careers. But ultimately, all New Yorkers will suffer as the lack of skilled workers becomes a long-term drain on economic activity across the state.

The two teachers systematically dissect the video, noting a variety of missteps. There are a few unquestionable errors of mathematics: Khan uses incorrect terminology at a couple of points. Khan is also inconsistent in his language about positive and negative numbers (using plus when he means positive, or minus when he means negative), which is perhaps a lesser sin, but poor practice and misleading for students. He's also inconsistent in his use of symbols, sometimes writing "+4", sometimes writing "4", never explaining why he does or doesn't. He making the kind of mistakes that would reduce his score on the Mathematical Quality of Instruction observational instrument, used in the Gates-funded Measures of Effective Teaching Project.