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Michelle Rhee spent nearly $1M in ad buys to defeat  due process and collective bargaining rights for teachers in Michigan. Rhee's group outspent all other Michigan lobbyists in 2011.  She teamed up with ultra-right wing legislators, Gov. Rick Snyder, and  her billionaire funders,  launching a Madison Avenue-style advertising campaign that bought her results

Results From the First Through Third Waves of the 2007-08 Beginning Teacher Longitudinal Study

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.

Monmouth University polling director Patrick Murray offered this response to my criticism of how he described tenure in a recent poll of New Jersey public opinion (see my brief reply and Bruce Baker's as well).

Some of Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million gift to the Newark school system will be given directly to public schoolteachers, one year after the Facebook founder announced the donation, said three people familiar with the plans. The foundation that manages the gift will announce Wednesday a two-year, $600,000 program that provides $10,000 grants to teachers or groups of teachers who come up with innovative classroom programs, these people said.

At a time when many states are adopting controversial measures to launch or expand private school vouchers, Republicans in Michigan are taking a different direction, moving ahead with a plan that would greatly expand the menu of public school choices for students and parents.

An organization called "The Third Way" released a report last week, in which they present descriptive data on what they call "middle class schools." The primary conclusion of their analysis is that "middle class schools" aren't "making the grade," and that they are "falling short on their most basic 21st century mission: To prepare kids to get a college degree." They also argue that "middle class schools" are largely ignored in our debate and policymaking, and we need a "second phase of school reform" in order to address this deficit. The Wall Street Journal swallowed the report whole, running a story presenting Third Way's findings under the headline "Middle class schools fail to make the grade."

It would be somewhat churlish to criticize any attempt to honor public school teachers just when they feel under assault by the modern school reform movement - including Monday night's glitzy celebration for some D.C. teachers at the Kennedy Center. But it seems fair to ask whether a fancy event at the city's leading arts venue - complete with big-time supporters (including The Washington Post Company) - is really the best or even appropriate way to celebrate teachers and their profession.

The film, "American Teacher," is a rebuttal of sorts to the pundits and politicians who are eager to battle unions and write teachers off as the over-protected recipients of Cadillac benefits, extended summer vacations and low expectations.

Yet another charter school is on the path to unionization after a majority of its teachers voted to seek representation from the United Federation of Teachers.

Look, you guys know I love Matt DiCarlo. I mean, I LOVE the guy. He and Bruce Baker are the two safe ports in a storm of reformy pseudo-research; I'd be lost without both. And I'm really flattered Matt added me to his blogroll, which I only noticed today. So it pains me to take great exception to this post

The past decade has seen increased testing of students and the concomitant proliferation of computer-based systems to store, manage, analyze, and report the data that comes from these tests. The research to date on teacher use of these data has mostly been qualitative and has mostly focused on the conditions that are necessary (but not necessarily sufficient) for effective use of data by teachers. Absent from the research base in this area is objective information on how much and in what ways teachers actually use student test data, even when supposed precursors of teacher data use are in place. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by analyzing usage data generated when teachers in one mid-size urban district log onto the web-based, district-provided data deliver and analytic tool. Based on information contained in the universe of web logs from the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 school years, I find relatively low levels of teacher interaction with pages on the web tool that contain student test information that could potentially inform practice. I also find no evidence that teacher usage of web-based student data is related student achievement, but there is reason to believe these estimates are downwardly biased.

A map of the funders of the charter school movement looks much like a map of the funders of the conservative wing of the Republican Party.

Late last month, Miami-Dade school district officials scolded the Academy of Arts & Minds charter school for charging fees to students to attend basic classes - in violation of state law. But when the school's governing board met the next day, the fee issue was not mentioned. And when a parent began reading from the district's warning letter to the school, two board members walked out.

The union representing nearly 700 public school employees who were laid off at the end of the school day on Friday held a last-minute lunchtime rally on the steps of City Hall, calling the layoffs a political vendetta and threatening possible legal action. But for all of the chanting and sign waving by District Council 37, the layoffs went through as planned. At the end of the day, Sungmi Kang, 47, a school aide at Stuyvesant High School, was out of work, along with 638 other school aides, parent coordinators, community associates, and other school support staff. They are the city's lowest paid employees and the latest victims of budget cuts.

The ring of the last school bell on Friday could be heralding the beginning of unemployment and uncertainty for more than 700 employees in 347 city schools - school aides, parent coordinators, health aides and other support staff to whom pink slips went out two weeks ago.

Fresh from a bruising battle to open a charter school in the Upper West Side, Eva Moskowitz, the former city councilwoman who runs a network of charters in New York City, is gearing up to expand into middle-class enclaves by opening a school in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, next fall.

I entered the fight against the 'reformers' back in February after hearing Duncan claim that a school in Chicago got dramatic results by shutting down and replacing with a charter school in the same building with the same kids, but with different adults. It was important for Duncan to have at least one 'miracle school' to prove that his style of reform was reaping results. Knowing this couldn't possibly be true, I investigated and found him to be using statistics in a very misleading way. This spurred my contacting the 'leader' of the other side (are they 'anti-reformers' or just 'pro-research'?), Diane Ravitch who then featured my investigation in a New York Times OpEd which generated a lot of attention.

The State of Michigan is currently considering a bill that would limit collective bargaining rights among teachers. Under the proposal, paying dues would be optional. This legislation, like other so-called "right to work" laws, represents an attempt to defund and create divisions within labor unions, which severely weakens teachers' ability to bargain fair contracts, as well as the capacity of their unions to advocate on behalf of of public schools and workers in general.

Pennsylvania School Boards Association site on tuition vouchers.