Education Links

"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."

"But, beyond this back-and-forth over the churn in these schools and whether it affected the results of this analysis, there's also a confusion of sorts when it comes to discussions of student attrition in charters, whether KIPP or in general. Supporters of school choice often respond to "attrition accusations" by trying to deny or downplay its importance or frequency. This, it seems to me, ignores an obvious point: Within-district attrition - students changing schools, often based on "fit" or performance - is a defining feature of school choice, not an aberration."

"The findings reviewed in this section refer to the results for the most appropriate comparison-the sending schools comparison-unless otherwise noted. Full results are in the body of the report or in the appendices. The CMOs included in this particular study included: KIPP, YES Preparatory, Harmony (Cosmos), IDEA, UPLIFT, School of Science and Technology, Brooks Academy, School of Excellence, and Inspired Vision."

"Advocacy that remains blind to evidence is a dangerous thing-especially in the pursuit of equity and democracy."

"Though the film "Won't Back Down," starring Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal, is not being released in theaters until the end of September, its backers are already drumming up support for it and its subject: the controversial "parent trigger" laws that have passed in a few states and are being considered by many others."

As the United States emerges from difficult economic times, the challenges of increasing child poverty, revenue declines and state budget cuts appear more daunting. Yet, so too is the national challenge of ensuring all students, especially low-income students and students with special needs, the opportunity to receive a rigorous, standards-based education to prepare them for today's economy. In order to address the challenges of concentrated student poverty and meet the needs of English-language learners and students with disabilities, states must develop and implement the next generation of standards-driven school finance systems, expressly designed to provide a sufficient level of funding, fairly distributed in relation to student and school need.  The inaugural edition of the National Report Card, issued in late 2010, served to focus attention on these important issues. This second edition, which analyzes data through 2009, seeks to continue and sharpen that focus. Amidst the ongoing effort to improve our nation's public schools, fair school funding is critical to being successful and sustaining progress. Creating and maintaining state systems of fair school funding is essential to improving our nation's public schools.

"In a sense, these Gulen salary structures and claims of insufficient teacher supply especially in math and science may be providing us with some insights as to what happens when we choose to pay teachers so poorly and when we strip them of any expectation of increased wages with experience. Maybe they do really have a domestic teacher supply problem. But their solution to that problem is not a scalable solution for American public schooling at large (cheap imported and temporary labor)."

"Public preference for property taxes stands in perfect inverse relation to the public taste for parfaits. Everybody loves parfaits[i] and everybody hates property taxes.[ii] No, I don't plan to spend this blog post bashing parfaits. I do like a good parfait. But, even more blasphemous, I intend to shed light on some of the virtues of much maligned property taxes. I often hear school funding equity advocates argue that if we could only get rid of property taxes as a basis for funding public schools, we could dramatically improve funding equity. The solution, from their standpoint is to fund schools entirely from state general funds - based on rationally designed state school finance formulas - where state general fund revenues are derived primarily from income and sales taxes.  In theory, if the state controls the distribution of all resources to schools and none are raised locally through property taxes, the system can be made much fairer, even more progressive with respect to student needs and cost variation "

"As a society, one of our most important shared responsibilities is the one we take to raise children who are ready to become productive, engaged members of our communities. It's up to all of us to keep them safe, healthy and whole, so they can do the hard work of learning and meeting their full potential. Keeping kids safe and healthy requires trust and cooperation among the adults in each child's life, as well as vigilance among the members of the broader community. This is why we have laws and policies against child abuse and neglect, as well as policies and practices that aim to prevent-or in the awful cases when that fails, to report and prosecute-such abuse. This is a serious issue, which is why it's incredibly offensive and dangerous for it to be politicized and trivialized, as has happened over the past few days. Last week, former journalist Campbell Brown published an incendiary op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, falsely accusing unions of failing to protect children."

"The question of what to do with bad teachers has stymied America's education system of late, sparking chaotic protests in state capitals and vitriolic debate in a recent congressional hearing. It has also stoked the movement known as 'education reform,' which has zeroed in on teacher quality by urging school districts to sort the star teachers from the duds, and reward or punish them accordingly. The idea is that America's schools would be able to increase their students' test scores if only they had better teachers. Since 2007, this wave of education reformers -- in particular Democrats for Education Reform, a group backed by President Barack Obama and hedge fund donors -- has clashed with teachers unions in their pursuit of making the field of education as discerning in its personnel choices as, say, that of finance. Good teachers should be promoted and retained, reformers contend, instead of being treated like identical pieces on an assembly line, who are rewarded with tenure for their staying power or seniority. But what to do with the underperformers?"

"Speaker: Anthony Bryk, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Video 9 of 13 This presentation was a part of "Tomorrow's Teacher: Paths to Prestige and Effectiveness," a session held May 18, 2012 at EWA's 65th National Seminar at the University of Pennsylvania. Program description America's teaching corps has become the focus of intense reform activity in recent years. A single, but by no means simple, question sits at the center of much of this work: How can we transform teaching into a prestigious profession? In this special plenary session, a succession of expert speakers delivers succinct talks over the course of the morning on various aspects of this critical topic."

"The modernization of teacher evaluation systems, an increasingly common component of school reform efforts, promises to reveal new, systematic information about the performance of individual classroom teachers. Yet while states and districts race to design new systems, most discussion of how the information might be used has focused on traditional human resource-management tasks, namely, hiring, firing, and compensation. By contrast, very little is known about how the availability of new information, or the experience of being evaluated, might change teacher effort and effectiveness. In the research reported here, we study one approach to teacher evaluation: practice-based assessment that relies on multiple, highly structured classroom observations conducted by experienced peer teachers and administrators. While this approach contrasts starkly with status quo "principal walk-through" styles of class observation, its use is on the rise in new and proposed evaluation systems in which rigorous classroom observation is often combined with other measures, such as teacher value-added based on student test scores."

"Costco's monthly magazine, Costco Connections, with a circulation of 8 million, contacted GEM a year ago asking us to debate on the issue of teacher seniority. I wrote that piece in opposition to E4E leader Sydney Morris (GEM/E4E Debate Seniority in Costco Mag: I Go Manno.... ). This year Costco was kind enough to come back to us on the charter issue and they suggested Julie Cavanagh do the article based on her role in opposing the charter school movement. In the August issue Julie debates KIPP co-founder Mike Feinberg."

"Louisiana's education chief has refused to provide records from the deliberations over how schools were chosen to participate in Gov. Bobby Jindal's new statewide voucher program, which is using tax dollars to send students to private and parochial schools. The Department of Education isn't claiming an exemption in public records law in denying the June 12 request from The Associated Press and delaying any production of the internal documents for at least several more weeks. Instead, the department is claiming "a deliberative process privilege" cited in two court rulings that have nothing to do with education issues, but involve legal battles over what records should be available to the Louisiana Legislative Auditor's Office."

"The situation with vouchers in Louisiana is obviously quite complicated, and there are strong opinions on both sides of the issue, but I'd like to comment quickly on the new "accountability" provision. It's a great example of how, too often, people focus on the concept of accountability and ignore how it is actually implemented in policy."

"Whither Opportunity? is a powerful statement from some of the best scholars in the country that popular bipartisan slogans like "no excuses" are backed by little to no research. The nature of educational inequality is shifting, from race to class, and if we want to make a difference in schools, we cannot ignore what goes on outside them."

"While I may be compelled to find some problems with Jones's conflicting messages between how she promotes herself and her religious claims, on balance, I cannot see Jones as the problem, but as a powerful embodiment of the forces that are the problem. In the same way, our public schools are mirrors of our social inequity: Regardless of how many times edu-celebrities say otherwise, poverty is destiny in the U.S. And let's be clear about some things here: Women are objectified in our culture, and they shouldn't be, and poverty is destiny in U.S. society and its public school, but it shouldn't be."

"Last month, a NewsWorks New Jersey post from public education blogger Laura Waters raised the ire of the daughter of the late Albert Shanker, the fiery education reformer and teachers union president. Waters thinks Shanker, whom she praised repeatedly in her piece, would support today's charter school movement. Not so, replied Jennie Shanker, a local artist and the union leader's daughter"

"A few days ago, CNN interviewed former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee about American education. Rhee, predictably, said that American education is terrible, that test scores are flat, and that we are way behind other nations on international tests. I disagree with Rhee. She constantly bashes American education, which is one of the pillars of our democratic society. Our public schools educate 90% of the population, and we should give the public schools some of the credit for our nation's accomplishments as the largest economy and the greatest engine of technological innovation in the world. It's time to set the record straight."

"I received the following description of the appearance of Michelle Rhee and her husband at the University of Hawaii, where they lectured on "Ethics and Education." Rhee paused briefly from her national campaign to raise $1 billion to remove teachers' collective bargaining rights, to strip them of tenure and seniority, and to promote vouchers and charters, to share her wisdom about American education."