Education Links

"In American public opinion it almost goes without saying that teachers should be paid more. The public is especially supportive of increasing compensation for accomplished teachers, teachers dedicated to working in hard to staff subjects, and teachers committed to closing the achievement gap."

"Robert Schwartz's post today on Huffington, "Why Charters and College Access Programs Should Cream," is but the latest incarnation of Social-Darwinism applied to current public education policy."

"More than seven years ago, a 44-year-old political scientist named Anthony Marx became the president of Amherst College, in western Massachusetts, and set out to change its admissions policies. Mr. Marx argued that elite colleges were neither as good nor as meritocratic as they could be, because they mostly overlooked lower-income students. "

"The New Jersey Supreme Court has rebuked Gov. Chris Christie and ordered the state to increase spending on poor schools by an estimated $500 million. "

"New York City education officials are developing more than a dozen new standardized tests, but in a sign of the times, their main purpose will be to grade teachers, not the students who take them. "

"Ever the excellent teacher, Rochester's Rich Ognibene offered news reporters a compelling analogy to explain why he and seven current and former New York State Teachers of the Year are saddened and frustrated over the Board of Regents' decision to allow up to 40 percent of a teacher's evaluation to be based on their students' state standardized test scores."

"A bill that would require charter schools to win voter approval in their communities was voted out of the Assembly Education Committee today, after a number of charter school advocates testified that requiring a referendum could divide communities and doom some schools."

"A trio of educators who have won State Teacher of the Year honors on Monday dropped off a letter addressed to the Board of Regents criticizing the teacher evaluation regs approved a week ago by the Board of Regents after some last-minute tailoring by Gov. Andrew Cuomo."

"At the commencement ceremony for Columbia University's Teachers College on May 18, Stanford education professor Linda Darling-Hammond-a nationally renowned leader in education reform and former education adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign-was awarded the Teachers College medal for distinguished service. Professor Darling-Hammond marked the occasion by delivering the following address:"

"Everyone agrees that American schools need help. But as Diane Ravitch argues, the fixes proposed by billionaire savior Bill Gates will only makes things worse."

"One of the more interesting characteristics of the recent curriculum counter-manifesto was its lead sentence, which had this lovely turn of phrase: we "oppose the call for a nationalized curriculum." Interesting, I thought, since I don't believe anyone at the Shanker Institute called for a nationalized curriculum; they called for a national or common curriculum. Was this a distinction without a difference? Was Shanker just being "sneaky"?"

""By any measure, New Jersey has one of the most segregated school systems in the country," said David Sciarra, director of the Education Law Center, the organization that brought the school aid cases to the state's highest court."

"Here's the letter that 10 assessment experts sent to the New York State Board of Regents earlier this month urging it not to approve a system that links student standard test scores to the evaluations of teachers and principals."

Abstract: The expansion of charter schools-publicly funded, yet in direct competition with traditional public schools-has emerged as a favored response to poor performance in the education sector. While a large and growing literature has sought to estimate the impact of these schools on student achievement, comparatively little is known about demand for the policy itself. Using election returns from three consecutive referenda on charter schools in Washington State, we weigh the relative importance of school quality, community and school demographics, and partisanship in explaining voter support for greater school choice. We find that low school quality-as measured by standardized tests-is a consistent and modestly strong predictor of support for charters. However, variation in performance between school districts is more predictive of charter support than variation within them. At the local precinct level, school resources, union membership, student heterogeneity, and the Republican vote share are often stronger predictors of charter support than standardized test results.

"...For those involved in policy matters, this book will, if you let it, unsettle you. Most involved in policy are addressing matters around the edges, even if they do confront matters of poverty and background. Perhaps you will find yourself disagreeing with some of what the authors present. Fair enough, but can you then as a reader and a policy maker come up with reasons for not addressing the issues with which they challenge you? Do not all of us-teachers, parents, administrators, policy makers-owe our children, our students, a willingness to think beyond our current practices so that we can do the best job possible of preparing them to take responsibility for the world which we will leave them?..."