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The 2012 "Education Reformers" - They bully, they're arrogant and they appear to believe that the law applies to others but not them. As Michelle Rhee and the other out-of-state "Education Reformers" pour into Connecticut to join their allies in the effort to Governor Malloy's ill-conceived "Education Reform" bill you'd think they'd recognize the importance of following Connecticut's laws. But apparently these "Education Reformers" either believe they are above the law on simply don't care if they get fined for violating the lobbyist rules we have in place.

Education policies focusing on equity in Education may be a particularly useful way for countries to increase earnings mobility between generations and reduce income inequality over time. Countries can work towards this goal by giving equal opportunities to both disadvantaged and advantaged students to achieve strong academic outcomes - laying a pathway for them to continue on to higher levels of Education and eventually secure good jobs.

According to a recent poll, 67 percent of registered voters in swing states said education was "extremely important" to them in this year's election. Parents of high schoolers and college students are particularly worried, or they should be, that the interest rate on federally backed student loans is set to double in July, from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. Meanwhile, only 8 percent of low-income students even make it out of college by age 24. Business leaders agree America needs to do a better job educating its kids if we want to remain competitive globally.  Yet despite all that, President Obama and Mr. Romney aren't talking about education's hard questions. They aren't even talking up their own successes. Why? Because education reform doesn't fit well with the overall argument either candidate is making about why he should get to sit in the Oval Office next January.

The office of Gov. Andrew Cuomo is touting some unflattering figures about New York's educational system today-"73 percent of New York's students graduate from high school and 37 percent are college ready." The stat is contained in the official press release announcing the creation of the New York education Reform Commission, a group that will meet across the state to gather input on education and then make recommendations to the governor by Dec. 1 2012, or, "such other date as the Governor shall advise the Commission." So you know expect recommendations on their time. Here is the full release from Cuomo's office

Special-education kids who would have been segregated in the past will be shifted into classrooms with general-education students under an ambitious program being launched in city public schools this fall. The move is intended to boost the students' performance by giving them more exposure to their peers - while keeping them closer to home by requiring for the first time that all schools accept them. But some educators say the push is financial rather than educationally driven - and will likely deprive students of services and cause havoc in the classrooms.

If you're an educator, a parent, a student or anyone who cares about public education, you should know that ALEC, the radical conservative lobbying group, is eyeing your throat. The American Legislative Exchange Council has been drawing drams of lifeblood from the public school system for decades, but now that it has disbanded its controversial Public Safety and Elections Task Force (read "More Guns and Fewer Democratic Voters Committee") it is expected to redouble its efforts to decrease local control of schools by parents and elected school boards, privatize public school jobs, funnel public dollars to private entities, and limit or destroy the collective bargaining rights educators rely on to advocate for students.

The idea that a handful of college instructors and student teachers in the school of education at the University of Massachusetts could slow the corporatization of public education in America is both quaint and ridiculous. Sixty-seven of the 68 students studying to be teachers at the middle and high school levels at the Amherst campus are protesting a new national licensure procedure being developed by Stanford University with the education company Pearson.

A new generation of education advocacy groups has emerged to play a formidable political role in states and communities across the country. Those groups are shaping policy through aggressive lobbying and campaign activity-an evolution in advocacy that is primed to continue in the 2012 elections and beyond. Bearing names meant to signal their intentions-Stand for Children, Democrats for education Reform, StudentsFirst-they are pushing for such policies as rigorous teacher evaluations based in part on evidence of student learning, increased access to high-quality charter schools, and higher academic standards for schools and students. Sometimes viewed as a counterweight to teachers' unions, they are also supporting political candidates who champion those ideas. Though the record of their electoral success is mixed, such groups' overall influence appears to be growing, and it has already helped alter the landscape of education policy, particularly at the state level.

"There has been a shift from the belief that we as a nation benefit from higher education, to a belief that it's the people receiving the education who primarily benefit and so they should foot the bill," concludes Ronald G. Ehrenberg, a trustee of the State University system of New York and director of the Cornell Higher education Research Institute. A more accurate description, I think, is "Failure by Design," the title of a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, which has long been a major source of reliable information and analysis on the state of the economy. The EPI study reviews the consequences of the transformation of the economy a generation ago from domestic production to financialization and offshoring. By design; there have always been alternatives.

This is the text of the commencement speech that Richard Rothstein, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, gave this past weekend at the Loyola University Chicago School of Education. The institute is a non-profit organization created in 1986 to broaden the discussion about economic policy to include the interests of low- and middle-income workers. Rothstein is also the author of several books on Education issues, and is senior fellow of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law. From 1999 to 2002, he was the national Education columnist of The New York Times.

The historic stability of higher education is remarkable. As former University of California President Clark Kerr once observed, the 85 human institutions that have survived in recognizable form for the last 500 years include the Catholic Church, a few Swiss cantons, the Parliaments of Iceland and the Isle of Man, and about 70 universities. The occasional small liberal arts school goes under, and many public universities are suffering budget cuts, but as a rule, colleges are forever. I think that rule is going to change, and soon. Many factors explain the endurance of higher education institutions-the ascent of the knowledge economy, their crucial role in upper-middle class acculturation, our peculiar national enthusiasm for college sports-but the single greatest asset held by traditional colleges and universities is their exclusive franchise for the production and sale of higher education credentials. In the last few months, however, that monopoly has begun to crumble. New organizations are being created to offer new kinds of degrees, in a manner and at a price that could completely disrupt the enduring college business model. The question is: Which colleges and universities will be the G.E. of the twenty-first century, and which will be as forgotten as U.S. Leather?

In advancing some interests, foundations have inevitably not advanced others. Hence, their actions must have political consequences, even when political purposes are not avowed or even intended. To avoid politics in dealing with foundation history is to miss a crucial part of the story. -Ellen Lagemann, Private Power for the Public Good When Microsoft magnate Bill Gates decided a decade ago that the "solution" to what he saw as America's failing school systems was an expansion of smaller schools, he started writing checks, a whole lot of checks, totaling more than $2 billion.   Gates is not the only billionaire who has decided to make education reform one of his pet projects. Los Angeles-based developer Eli Broad, the mega-rich Walton family (founders of Walmart) and other philanthropists currently give some $4 billion a year in contributions to education. But these handouts are hardly purely philanthropic. They come tied with policy strings and a well-defined agenda. While not the only donors, Gates, Broad and the Waltons have emerged as the highest-profile deep-pocket benefactors of what has become a nationwide education reform movement.

The Louisiana "reforms" are intended to encourage pupils to transfer out of public education. There is nothing in them to improve public schools, just to promote alternatives so that students can "escape." The Jindal "reforms" are a template for the Romney education program. Romney, who went to elite private schools and sent his own children to elite private schools,  views public education as a disaster. Given his Bain background, he may see public education as a business that should be shut down, with its component parts sold off. From his perspective, privatization makes sense.

Readers may recall that I posted a blog criticizing the College Board for its shameful campaign attacking American education. The ad says that the education system is "crumbling" and calls on the presidential candidates to talk more about education. The College Board asserts that American education is bad and getting worse. I received two great responses. One came from the brilliant scholar Yong Zhao, now at the University of Oregon. He makes reference to a valuable comment by Brian, which follows Yong Zhao

One pervasive reformy argument is that our entire education system may be instantly transformed to be more productive and efficient by instantly adopting untested reformy policies and/or untested solutions of sectors other than education. Further, that we must take these bold leaps of faith because the public education system itself is too corrupt, too bloated, too inefficient to provide any useful lessons! Perhaps the whole system can be replaced with you-tube videos. Or perhaps we can just fire all of the teachers with more than 10 years experience and pay the rest based on the test scores they produce! Or perhaps some other lessons of industry can cure the (unsubstantiated) ills of American public schooling!

The type of clothing worn in a family's home, the language spoken and other cultural markers could influence whether special-education students receive taxpayer-funded private-school tuition, under a bill passed last month by the New York state Legislature. education officials would have to consider a student's "home environment and family background" when deciding the best setting for special-education children under the bill. Currently, decisions about private-school placement have generally been based on academics and the child's disability.

"The National Press Club Newsmaker Program holds a discussion on school choice programs in Washington, D.C. Speakers discuss whether the choice options work for students and how options such as charter schools, vouchers, online education and homeschooling compare to traditional public schools. They also examine what political candidates are saying about school choice options and whether their claims are true. Participants include: Dr. Kevin Welner of the University of Colorado and Dir. of the Natl. education Policy Center; Dr. Gary Miron of Western Michigan University; Policy and Advocacy for the Natl. Association of Charter School Authorizers Vice President Alex Medler; Executive Director of the District of Columbia's 21st Century School Fund Mary Filardo; and Center for educational Freedom at the Cato Institute Policy Analyst Adam Schaeffer. Drs. Kevin Welner and Gary Miron are contributors to the book: Exploring the School Choice Universe: Evidence and Recommendations, being released this week. The book raises critical questions about the performance of choice programs."

"Poverty continues to be the No. 1 impediment to educational success, as children of poor families are more likely to drop out than wealthy children, and the report suggests that solutions have yet to be found for high-poverty school districts: School budgets are tied to property taxes. This is why schools in poor neighborhoods get about half as much money per student than schools in affluent neighborhoods. To make generational progress for students from low-income families and prepare them to be successful in secondary and post-secondary education, many say change must be student-centered. But nationally, education standards are intimately tied to income."

In an effort to inform the public and shape education reform in the upcoming year, members of the Hoover Institution's Koret Task Force on K-12 education released their second annual list of the top five best and top five worst events in American education in 2011. This list indicates that several positive developments led to greater parental choice, system transparency and teacher accountability; however, "the worst" events indicate that there remains considerable room for improvement.

Stand for Children's claim, that they are a grassroots organization that stands for access to quality education for all students, is appealing to many parents and educators. A closer inspection, however, reveals a very different agenda, one that is driven by vast amounts of corporate money and dangerous, ideology-driven notions of education reform. In this program we take a close look at Stand for Children and their controversial activities.