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This video of corporate reformer Jonah Edelman has been causing a stir in the edu-blogosphere this weekend. You may not want to watch the whole thing (it's down below), as it gets into the weeds of a specific political fight taking place in Illinois over "Senate Bill 7," but it is instructive for a larger reason.

In 2008, when Katherine Sprowal's son, Matthew, was selected in a lottery to attend the Harlem Success Academy 3 charter school, she was thrilled. "I felt like we were getting the best private school, and we didn't have to pay for it," she recalled.

We examine the link between math skills and labor-market outcomes using a resume-based field experiment.

After years spent directing the distribution of more than $1 billion from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation into hundreds of schools across the nation, Tom Vander Ark set his sights on the New York area, with a plan to create a network of charter schools of his own.

"Local charter schools serving middle and high school students are losing about half their teachers every year, according to a study of the Los Angeles Unified School District released Tuesday. The rate of turnover is nearly three times that of other public schools, although they also are seeing high rates of departures."

This past Mon­day, the Wall Street Jour­nal posted an opin­ion piece by Fran Tarken­ton in which he pos­tu­lated what the NFL might be like if it had to play by what he called "teach­ers' rules."

Okay. You all know that I like to call out dumb graphs. And I've addressed a few on this blog previously. Here are a few from the past: http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/dumbest-real-reformy-graphs/ Now, each of the graphs in this previous post and numerous others I've addressed, like this one (From RiShawn Biddle) had something over the graph I'm going to address in this post. Each of the graphs I've addressed previously at the very least used some "real" data. They all used it badly. Some used it in ways that should be considered illegal. Others… well… just dumb. But this new graph, sent to me from a colleague who had to suffer through this presentation, really takes the cake. This new graph comes to us from Marguerite Roza, from a presentation to the New York Board of Regents in September. And this one rises above all of these previous graphs because IT IS ENTIRELY FABRICATED. IT IS BASED ON NOTHING.

A low-performing Manhattan high school that was granted up to $6 million in extra funds to undergo a "transformation" has found the secret formula for success: Dumb down the requirements for students to pass.

California Gov. Jerry Brown wrote a tough indictment of data-based school reform in a message he wrote vetoing a bill that would have changed the state's accountability system for public schools.

Some school reformers are fond of saying that "great teaching" can overcome the effects of living poverty on children, and that those people (me included) who insist that poverty matters are only supporting the status quo. The critics of school reform that I know are hardly happy with the status quo, nor do they believe that poverty must be eliminated for public schools to be improved.

When Hector Leon arrived at Urban Assembly Academy of History and Citizenship for Young Men four years ago to be the high school's college advisor, he found himself in an "emergency" situation. "When I got there, there was no college office in place," said Leon, 41. "It's a difficult position, because you have a lot of need in the population. I mean, you become a brother, father, uncle." Last week, Leon became one of the nearly 700 school employees laid off in a sweeping single-agency cut, the largest since Mayor Bloomberg took office. His position was eliminated during a crucial time when students start working on their college applications and financial aid packages. Leon was helping one student apply to Harvard and Yale.

A federal district court in Florida has ruled that parents of a student with autism have stated a valid claim that charter school employees' use of excessive force constituted a violation of the student's substantive due process rights. The court concluded that the parents had alleged facts sufficient to show: (1) use of excessive force that "shocks the conscience;" and (2) the charter school employees acted under color of state law. It found, however, that the parents' allegations of emotional injuries and psychological harm were insufficient to rise to the level of conduct that shocks the conscience.

Video of Commissioner King's presentation at the NYSCOSS Fall Conference on Superintendent Leadership and the Regents Reform Agenda.

Last month, students at Great Neck North High School were accused of paying an Emory University student to take the SAT exam for them. A new report now says the investigation is expanding to two other Long Island School districts and a private school, and officials say they have identified at least one more student who may have impersonated students and taken SATs for payments. SchoolBook invited student journalists at city high schools to write about the cheating scandal. Students from Stuyvesant High School submitted a news article and an editorial from The Spectator, the Stuyvesant High School newspaper.

Presentation to NYS School Superintendents.

Decision confirms parents' freedom of speech when warning parents about bad charters Equality Charter School in the Bronx recently lost its bid to silence parents who had been speaking out through online media about the school's many problems.  Equality Charter School had taken action to shut down a website, www.equalitycharterschool.com, alleging incompetence, misuse of school funds, and nepotism on the part of the school administration.

Our family gets a close-up look of how big money has taken over politics -- even at the local level

With all the recent coverage of Occupy Wall Street and President Obama's jobs bill, we've heard a lot of polling results showing that a large plurality of Americans supports raising taxes on high earners, and that this support is strong among both Democrats and Republicans.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg made quite a splash last year when he donated $100 million to help fix Newark's troubled schools not only because of the size of the gift but its promise of involving Newark residents in deciding how the money would be spent-funds that the city would match.  According to Joan Whitlow of the Star-Ledger's NJ.com, that promise of "citizen-centered" involvement has fallen by the wayside with the announcement that the Foundation for Newark's Future will be dispensing Zuckerberg funds.  Whitlow reports that the foundation's board has three voting and one nonvoting members, only one of whom is from Newark, and that's Mayor Cory Booker.  The only way to get on the board, according to Gregory Taylor, the foundation's president and CEO, is to donate at least $10 million because the foundation has to "raise enough to match the original $100 million."  

It looks like pressure from multiple directions has achieved one victory in the larger battle to prevent a new version of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) from being as test-obsessed as the current law. This victory increases the odd of a new law being a realistic and useful tool for school improvement.