Education Links

"They hoped their cash could transform failing classrooms. They were wrong. NEWSWEEK investigates what their money bought."

"Ed schools seem to make an easy target in public policy debates over the quality of American public schooling and the American teacher workforce."

"Test scores are an inadequate proxy for quality because too many factors outside of the teachers' control can influence student performance from year to year - or even from classroom to classroom during the same year. Often, more than half of those teachers identified as the poorest performers one year will be judged average or above average the next, and the results are almost as bad for teachers with multiple classes during the same year. Fortunately, there's a far more direct approach: measuring the amount of time a teacher spends delivering relevant instruction - in other words, how much teaching a teacher actually gets done in a school day. "

"Well, this is exactly what Chris Christie wants to do to teachers. His draft bill eliminates the "masters bump", unless the Education Commissioner says the degree is one he likes, like in math (no matter that you may have studied math education in an elementary ed program). There is no grandfather clause: if Chris Cerf thinks your degree is useless, out goes your raise - even if your district had approved your program years ago."

"Racial imbalance is making a comeback in Florida's public schools with the new wave of charter schools springing up across the state."

"Budget language presented yesterday by the Ohio House, run by Republicans, risks making the Buckeye State the nation's laughing stock when it comes to charter school programs. During the early and mid-2000s Ohio was known as the Wild West of charter school programs because the state encouraged dozens of charter schools to spring up over night."

"The current and historical claims that public education is failing are more often than not political and corporate hyperbole that serves not to address education reform or to fulfill the promise of universal public education, but instead masks the political and corporate failures that allow swelling poverty among children and an ever-widening equity gap among the American public."

"In the midst of both teach praise and teacher bashing nowadays abides a nagging but persistent assumption among state and federal policymakers hellbent on the standards-testing-accountability agenda, charter school operators, and high-tech enthusiasts for online instruction that most teachers resist change."

"WHEN we don't get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don't blame the soldiers. We don't say, "It's these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That's why we haven't done better in Afghanistan!" No, if the results aren't there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition. And yet in education we do just that..."

"How Tom Luna's co-workers from the Bush administration - and the private education companies they now help run - positioned Idaho's schools chief to make changes that the for-profit education industry may cash in on"