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She was crying when I picked up the phone. "Miss Klein, I do not know what to do. I am thinking that maybe I should not have brought her here to this country. This is a big mistake. I cannot understand why no one will listen to me. I am not sending my daughter to that school - that school has no uniforms! It is too far from home. I need her to go to another school!"

The final drafts of the Common Core State Standards were released a year and a half ago-almost to the day. Anyone who's read the Race to the Top applications or the ESEA waivers knows that state departments of education have begun to put together statewide CCSS implementation plans. Some states are working to revise curricula. Others are adjusting current assessment blueprints to reflect CCSS priorities. And all are thinking about the changes that they will need to make to professional development and training in the coming months to make this sea change in standards work for kids.

A paradox of American higher education is this: The expectations of leading universities do much to define what secondary schools teach, and much to establish a template for what it means to be an educated man or woman. College campuses are seen as the source for the newest thinking and for the generation of new ideas, as society's cutting edge.

Michelle Rhee, the controversial former chancellor of D.C. public schools, is a lightning rod. Her confrontational style has made her many friends as well as enemies. As is usually the case, people's reaction to her approach in no small part depends on whether or not they support her policy positions. I try to be open-minded toward people with whom I don't often agree, and I can certainly accept that people operate in different ways. Honestly, I have no doubt as to Ms. Rhee's sincere belief in what she's doing; and, even if I think she could go about it differently, I respect her willingness to absorb so much negative reaction in order to try to get it done. What I find disturbing is how she continues to try to build her reputation and advance her goals based on interpretations of testing results that are insulting to the public's intelligence.

An electronic billboard on Business Route 6 in Dickson City flashes an image of smiling students and teachers. The advertisement for the Mid Valley School District promotes student achievement and district accomplishments. At $900 a month, officials hope it saves thousands in lost tuition. As online charter school enrollment continues to grow, public school districts across the region and state are facing competition like they never have before. When students leave public school districts, their state funding follows them to cyber schools. Districts are now advertising, holding recruitment nights and thinking about public relations.

I think it's bad for society for such disparities, although they are hardly new. But they were always bad for the general welfare and health of the rest of the people. But, offended as I am, I'm more concerned about the fact that it makes democracy, in any serious sense, virtually impossible. Because money comes with power-the more money, the more power. A society ruled by laws is a farce when some must defend themselves with a court-appointed attorney and others ... .

The Education Department will spend about $5 billion on the program, and even if you're thinking, hey, I could use $5 billion, consider this: New York won the largest federal grant, $700 million over the next four years. In that time, roughly $230 billion will be spent on public education in the state. By adding just one-third of one percent to state coffers, the feds get to implement their version of education reform. That includes rating teachers and principals by their students' scores on state tests; using those ratings to dismiss teachers with low scores and to pay bonuses to high scorers; and reducing local control of education.

When Gov. Andrew Cuomo presented his budget to the state on Tuesday, he promised a windfall of school aid for poor districts. After years of cuts worth billions of dollars, education advocates hailed the $805 million school aid increase in the governor's spending plan as a restoration sorely needed in classrooms that have lost teachers and programs in recent years. But a closer look shows relief for high-needs districts is still far off, as much of that 4 percent increase will go to mandated expenses and a competition that will render some districts losers. Officials in some districts don't think the tiny increases they will see this year will even cover the jump in employee benefits.

State Education Commissioner John King spent most of his time before legislators today going to bat for Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposed schools budget. But on one key point, he said the Board of Regents would prefer a change. The Regents would rather not hinge so much of the state's funds on a competition among districts, King said. Cuomo proposed using $250 million of a proposed $800 million school aid increase to reward districts for strong academic performance and management efficiency. King said the Regents, whose agenda is similar but not identical to Cuomo's, would slash that number by 80 percent. They would still hand out $50 million through a competition but think the remaining $200 million would be better used helping high-needs districts cover their expenses, he said.

A persistent -- and, I think, powerful -- theme in conservatism is the emphasis upon limits and doubt about the wisdom of centralized actors.  One of the strongest pragmatic defenses of the free market is that centralized authority is not efficient enough and wise enough to direct the economic energies of the nation; hence, a diversity of economic actors should make their own, personal economic decisions.  Moreover, a mainstream of conservative philosophy from Burke onwards suggests that the richness of a given human society and culture goes beyond mere statistics -- something about the weave of human life resists quantification. However, a great many "conservatives" ignore these teachings when the topic of education "reform" comes up.

At their core, public charter schools are about one simple trade-off: a charter school receives more autonomy to operate in the way its staff thinks will provide the best results for students. In return, it accepts greater accountability for the results it achieves academically and operationally - with the understanding that if a school fails, it will be closed. That is why charters get a license to operate for five years at a time - and have to make the case that they should be renewed.

Ten years ago, George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act, the law that has dominated U.S. education-and the education policy debate-for the entire decade. While lawmakers are struggling to update that measure, experts across the political spectrum are struggling to make sense of its impact and legacy. Did NCLB, and the consequential accountability movement it embodied, succeed? And with near-stagnant national test scores of late, is there reason to think that this approach to school reform is exhausted? If not "consequential accountability," what could take the U.S. to the next level of student achievement? Join three leading experts at the Fordham Institute at 8:30 a.m. EST on January 5 as they wrestle with these questions. Panelists include Hoover Institute economist Eric Hanushek, DFER's Charles Barone, and former NCES commissioner Mark Schneider, author of a forthcoming Fordham analysis of the effects of consequential accountability.

Special education teacher Pam Emerson sent me this as an introduction to her Forget the Label blog. It hooked me, and I think will do the same to you. - Jay Mathews

Okay, I think I'm going to need to preface this one.  I'm about to write the TFA version of the Kubler-Ross model.  Now, this analogy has to be taken with a grain of salt, because what CMs go through isn't exactly a grieving process.  BUT it's survival mode for the first year, and it requires a sense of humor.  After all, I'm more sarcastic now than I've ever been in my entire life.  It's like if Ms. Lora had a less successful, more sarcastic teacher down the hall that TFA will not have you visit as a prospective CM, it'd be me.  (Do I sense a sequel to Ms. Lora's Story?  A part-time summer job, perhaps? I need a title.  Suggestions are welcome.).  So here it goes.

A few months back I got into an interesting discussion with my high school friends on Facebook about the books we read in our tenth grade advanced English class at Westhill High School in Stamford. My friend Debbie, who's clearly even more of a pack rat than my mother, still had the syllabus, and was able to rattle off impressively long list of books that we'd read and analyzed. When I compared it to the number of books my daughter, a high school sophomore, will get through this year in her advanced English class, it's really quite astounding. But actually, it's not. When I look at the school calendar, the entire month of March is lost to CMT/CAPT testing.  And that's just the actual testing. Much of the month before will be devoted to exercises that prepare students for the tests. Not for reading great works of literature and learning to use critical thinking skills, but rather for learning test taking skills.

Teachers are neither mercenaries nor missionaries. They do the best they can in spite of - not because of - the salaries they receive. Reformers who have never taught do not understand what motivates teachers. I don't think they ever will. All the more reason to be skeptical about "innovative" merit pay plans.

The federal law that everybody loves to hate turns ten on Sunday. Here's what to think about it:

I want to be brief, but I think it is time that the "No Excuses" Reform movement answer some questions that simmer beneath their claims of "no excuses" and "poverty is not destiny." I want to move past the data and to why that data exist, and it is in the why that what claims the "No Excuses" Reformers are making become clear.

Joe Nystrom, who teaches math at a low-income high school here, used to think that only a tiny group of students -- the ''smart kids'' -- were capable of advanced coursework. But two years ago, spurred by a national program that offered cash incentives and other support for students and teachers, Mr. Nystrom's school, South High Community School, adopted a come one, come all policy for Advanced Placement courses. Today Mr. Nystrom teaches A.P. statistics to eight times as many students as he used to, and this year 70 percent of them scored high enough to qualify for college credit, compared with 50 percent before. One in four earned the top score possible, far outpacing their counterparts worldwide.

Are charter schools the answer for public education? If what you know about charters comes from last year's ballyhooed film "Waiting for Superman," you probably think so. But the answer is, in fact, much more complex. My late husband, Albert Shanker, was one of the first education leaders to advocate for the concept in 1988, as president of the American Federation of Teachers. Al envisioned charter schools as teacher-led laboratories for reform within public schooling, tasked with developing innovative strategies to "produce more learning for more students." He saw them operating with a high level of autonomy from bureaucracy, yet remaining an integral part of our public education system.