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School reformers are a dime a dozen these days, with education policy a suddenly sexy field and more than a few people willing to challenge the status quo. But it wasn't always so. Back in the 1960s, when Fordham Institute president Checker Finn got his start as an education gadfly, contrarian thinking was hard to come by. In Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik, Finn takes readers on a magic bus ride through the most momentous twists and turns of the past 40 years of education history-many of which he found himself in the middle of. What lessons should today's reformers take from past education battles? Which critical episodes are most often overlooked? And does Finn's own life experience make him optimistic or pessimistic about America-and its schools-going forward?

We frequently present quick analyses of data on this blog (and look at those done by others). As a close follower of the education debate, I often get the sense that people are hungry for high-quality information on a variety of different topics, but searching for these data can be daunting, which probably deters many people from trying. So, while I'm sure that many others have compiled lists of data resources relevant to education, I figured I would do the same, with a focus on more user-friendly sources. But first, I would be remiss if I didn't caution you to use these data carefully. Almost all of the resources below have instructions or FAQ's, most non-technical. Read them. Remember that improper or misleading presentation of data is one of the most counterproductive features of today's education debates, and it occurs to the detriment of all. That said, here are a few key resources for education and other related quantitative data. It is far from exhaustive, so feel free to leave comments and suggestions if you think I missed anything important.

Three West Harlem secondary schools are on the chopping block for poor performance and in danger of being closed. All three schools are, or will soon be, sharing buildings with charter schools belonging to the Success Academy Network. Some in the community think their schools are being sacrificed to allow for the expansion of the well-funded and politically potent Success Academy Network. They say the DOE has not done enough to support the struggling schools. The DOE is "starving these schools so they have an excuse to shut them down," said Noah Gotbaum, a representative for Community Education Council 3 who attended public hearings about the future of all three schools.

The next big idea in "education reform" is online instruction and cyber charters. I know that teachers are doing wonderful, creative activities with technology, and there is no doubt that technology can bring history, science, and other studies to life in vivid ways. But there is a cloud on the horizon, and that is the growth of the for-profit cyber charters. I confess that it troubles me to think of children sitting at home, day after day, with no opportunity for discussion and debate, no interaction with their peers, no face-to-face encounters with a real teacher.

Maybe we can all agree on a basic starting point: no one is perfect, and every individual and organization should strive for growth and improvement. To go a step further, perhaps we can all agree that it is our shared responsibility to monitor public institutions - including schools, school districts, state and federal governments - and hold them to high standards. What happens when we fall short?  Or when "they" fall short?  How do we respond?  What do we want to see happen?  Too often in this culture, I think we assign blame.  Someone must be held accountable - and if it wasn't my job, then I certainly can't be blamed for the results.  By shaming or punishing those responsible, we feel like we've done our job as monitors or guardians of whatever values we uphold and whatever institutions have let us down.  It feels good, doesn't it - seeing the scandal hit home, the lies revealed, the hypocrites exposed, the inept upbraided and the corrupt brought low?

Education Secretary Arne Duncan in a speech Tuesday pushed higher education officials to "think more creatively - and with much greater urgency - about how to contain the spiraling costs of college and reduce the burden of student debt on our nation's students." At a time when the Occupy movement has helped push college costs into the national spotlight, the Education Department characterized the speech, delivered in Las Vegas, as the start of a "national conversation about the rising cost of college." The department took the opportunity to call attention to steps the Obama administration has taken to reduce the net price that students and families pay for higher education and make it easier to pay back student loans.

Shortly before Thanksgiving, The New York Times reported that criminal charges have been filed against 20 students in an affluent New York suburb for allegedly cheating on the SAT. Some are accused of paying stand-ins up to $3,500 per test to take the exam for them; others accepted payment to take the test. Bernard Kaplan, the principal of Great Neck North High School, which five of the accused students attended, suggested that the experience of his community is the tip of an iceberg. "I think it's widespread across the country," he told The Times. "We were the school that stood up to it." We have every reason to believe he's right. While criminal authorities and the Educational Testing Service, which administers the exam, investigate, parents and educators should ask: What have we done to lead teens to such an act of desperation?

The Center For American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank, has largely bought the educational agenda of "the billionaires' boys club." It seeks a balance, with just enough union-baiting to appease corporate powers. The CAP does its share of teacher-bashing, apparently in order to parrot the word "accountability" over and over, but it does not want to spark a stampede of teaching talent from inner city schools. Two new reports, "Designing High Quality Evaluations for High School Teachers," and "Teaching Children Well," embody the tension inherent in the CAP's "Sister Souljah" tactic of demonstrating its independence from Democratic constituencies by beating up on educators. Both document the potential of improved professional development, informed by data and enhanced by video technology, to improve student performance. One also asserts that test score growth must be used to evaluate teachers, but the other is largely silent on that issue.

This is NOT a story of wonderful triumph and success.  It is a story of some of the realities of teaching, especially in a school or district of high poverty, full of minority children. It is a brutally honest film.   It is a film with a point of view, one that I largely share.   Let me tell you why I think you should see this film.

In November 2007, when our school received its first progress report grade, an A, I wrote a letter to our staff to say that I was pleased with our grade. However, I also told our staff that "I believe the progress report fails to capture the essence of a school, and it fails to measure the things that make our school such a great place." Four years later, with the progress report on its fifth iteration, I think my letter remains an accurate appraisal of the most important rating tool now in use by the Department of Education.

How to improve our schools? Let's start with what we know: Teachers are the most important factor in a child's schooling, and many of our teachers are not very good. But wait a moment. How do we know that? Given the current fascination with education policies that focus on teachers - typically market-oriented policies such as pink slips for bad teachers and bonuses for good ones - it would be wise to make certain that teachers are the problem we think they are.

On the one hand you've got billionaire philanthropists like Bill Gates, pouring money into reshaping public education into whatever model they think best-and because they're billionaires, they must know best about everything, right? On the other hand you've got the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), spreading toxic, corporate-authored model legislation around the states to push for anti-immigrant laws, voter disenfranchisement laws, anti-sick leave laws and more. Except, wait. This isn't an on the one hand, on the other hand situation-they're the same hand, spreading the influence of the very wealthy not just in what politicians get elected, but what laws get passed. And Bill Gates' foundation is honoring that shared goal with a $376,635 grant to ALEC

In today's Washington Post and then on Fordham's site here, Fordham's Mike Petrilli and AEI's Rick Hess write that we are "defining excellence down" by not sufficiently challenging high-achievers. They are concerned that the nation's focus-federal education efforts in particular-will "compromise opportunities for our highest-achieving students." Petrilli and Hess seem to think the federal government is wrong to force schools to have equitable numbers of poor kids in advanced classes because, let's be realistic, the "unseemly reality" that poor kids are way behind and can't hang in tough classes is just a fact. Putting them in tough classes isn't fair to anyone (including our kids who could really reach the moon if these other kids weren't dragging them down).

Teacher evaluation is at the top of the list of things to talk about in the education reform world. I've largely stayed away from writing about it on this blog because I think there are a lot of more fundamental changes that need to be made in public education before we spend time revamping teacher evaluation. It seems to me that a lot of new evaluation schemes are attempting to hold teachers accountable for factors they don't control and penalize them for shortcomings for which they are not responsible.

I think it is safe to say that most educated people understand that student achievement scores have been, and continue to be, manipulated for political ends. I suspect the truth lies somewhere between genuine concern for improving public education and an insidious desire to destroy public education. On that issue, I will leave you to decide. I would, however, like to give you an insider's view of a state supported scheme to shift our tax dollars to private companies at the expense of our students.

I think what we are seeing in education is neither art nor science, but the attempt to turn education into an engineering problem.  In engineering, it is of course important to have rigorous standards.  In manufacturing the ideal of exactly the same interchangeable parts is an important component of mass production, which provides consistency, and may even save on cost. But students are not, and should not be, widgets or other manufactured outputs.  They are absolutely unique individuals, and should be respected as such, even as we try to assist them in growing and developing and learning how to learn.  Please note that last phrase - learning how to learn -  we thereby empower them to lifelong learning that does not depend upon a formal school/educational setting.  

But in all the acrimonious discussion surrounding NCLB, surprisingly little attention has been given to the actual impact of that legislation and other accountability systems on student performance. Now a reputable body, a committee set up by the National Research Council (NRC), the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences, has reached a conclusion on this matter. In its report, Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education, the committee says that NCLB and state accountability systems have been so ineffective at lifting student achievement that accountability as we know it should probably be dropped by federal and state governments alike. Further, the committee objects to state laws that require students to pass an examination for a high school diploma. There is no evidence that such tests boost student achievement, the committee says, and some students, about 2 percent, are not getting their diplomas because they can't-or think they can't-pass the test. The headline of the May 2011 NRC press release is frank and bold in the way committee reports seldom are: "Current test-based incentive programs have not consistently raised student achievement in U.S.; Improved approaches should be developed and evaluated."

The word "policy" makes us think of politicians and bureaucrats. But what happens when powerful policy-makers aren't elected or appointed? Today, billionaires are shaping education policy in the United States. Buying political influence--even legally--feels dirty, so let me try again: Philanthropists are saving our schools! See what happened when I replaced "political influence" with "philanthropy"?

The Cato Institute's Neal McCluskey has energetically denounced the slimmed-down federal role that Linda Darling-Hammond and I sketched last week, offering a not-unreasonable litany of complaints about federal overreach. (It's amusing that Neal thinks I'm endorsing big government, given that most in education regard me as unduly harsh when it come to federal efforts, but that's a topic for another day.) What's relevant here is that Neal's response also illustrates the problems that bedevil those who want to get Washington "out" of education. The biggest is that even Tea Party sympathizers have shown precious little willingness to get serious about putting an end to federal ed spending.

Here's the point: parents have the right to select any school they believe best meets the interests and needs of their children. But the devil is always in the details. If truth-in-advertising laws were applied to school choice, I think more parents would be reluctant to expend the time, energy and money in the hope of getting a quality education for their children. Instead, parents might be willing to push for improving existing traditional schools in their neighborhoods. But don't try telling that to reformers.