Education Links

"If there is one take away about the social side approach, it is the idea that relationships matter in education. Teaching and learning are not solo but rather social endeavors and, as such, they are best achieved by working together. The social side perspective: (1) shifts the focus from the individual to the broader context in which individuals operate; (2) highlights the importance of interdependencies at all levels of the system - e.g., among teachers within a school, leaders across a district, schools and the community; and (3) recognizes that crucial resources (e.g., information, advice, support) are exchanged through interpersonal relationships."

"I'm no-longer surprised these days by the belligerent wrongness of rhetoric around school funding equity and adequacy. Arguably, much of the supporting rationale for the current (and other recent) education reforms is built on the house of cards that when it comes to financing equitably and adequately our public school systems - especially those serving our neediest children, we've been there and done that. In fact, we've been there and done that for decades."

"RTI raises many concerns. Some parents worry that RTI winds up denying children with learning disabilities services. One fear is that some parents don't think they can request an evaluation, or they are led to believe it isn't necessary."

"More recent research, however, has found that when schools have more money, they are able to give their students a better education. A new study on those who went to school during the school-finance cases a few decades ago found that those who attended districts that were affected by the rulings were more likely to stay in school through high school and college and are making more money today."

"Our guest author today is Stephen Lazar, a founding teacher at Harvest Collegiate High School in New York City, where he teaches Social Studies. A National Board certified teacher, he blogs at Outside the Cave. Stephen is also one of the organizers of Insightful Social Studies, a grass roots campaign of teachers to reform the newly proposed New York State Social Studies standards. The following is Steve's testimony this morning in front of the Senate HELP committee's hearing on ESEA reauthorization."

"Systems like the APPR system in NY mistakenly place an emphasis on human capital rather than social capital and thus are doomed to failure. Rooted in what Michael Fullan categorized as "wrong drivers of change," systems that emphasize individual human capital over social capital and that emphasize the use of accountability data in a punitive way are simply doomed to failure. To replace old systems with similar systems, repeatedly, gets us to the insanity that some other than Einstein, Franklin, or Twain described."

"Overall, then, teacher turnover, in both its attrition and mobility "forms," was quite stable between 2007-08 and 2012-13, although, as usual, there is a great deal of variation underlying the national estimates. And, although it is very difficult to determine the extent to which economic circumstances-the Great Recession in particular-influenced this trend, weakness in the general job market during this period is likely to have played a role."

"This post is taken from a forthcoming report in which I summarize literature related to state school finance reforms and explore relationships between changing distributions of funding and distributions of tangible classroom level resources. The newly released Jackson, Johnson and Persico NBER paper speaks to similar issues and is included in the discussion that follows"

"Here is an open letter to Alexander and his committee about the NCLB rewrite that was written by an award-winning principal, Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York."

"This post is a follow up to my previous post in which I discussed the misguided arguments for maintaining a system of annual standardize testing of all students. In my post, I skipped over one argument that seems to be pretty common among the beltway pundits. I skipped this argument largely because the point is moot if we plan on using testing data appropriately to begin with. My point in the previous post was about tests, testing data and how to use it appropriately. But just as the beltway pundit crowd so dreadfully misunderstands tests and testing data, they also dreadfully misunderstanding demography and geography and the intersection of the two. A related example of the complete lack of demographic "data sense" in the current policy discourse is addressed in my recent post on "suburban poverty.""

"Bianca Tanis explains in the AFT publication why high-stakes testing is wrong for children with special needs. She describes a system under political pressure to produce data, where data trumps instruction and the needs of children."

"Here's my quick run-down on a) the purposes of testing in schools, b) how to implement testing to best address those purposes, c) the right and wrong uses of testing with respect to civil rights concerns, and d) the role of common standards in all of this."

"In this brief, I present preliminary findings that are part of a larger, national analysis of newly released federal data, a primary objective of which is to evaluate the extent to which those data yield findings consistent with findings arrived at using state level data sources. In this brief, I specifically explore variations in student characteristics and resources across schools in Newark, NJ."

"Education Secretary Arne Duncan is seen as the most powerful education secretary ever, given his use of federal funding and No Child Left Behind waivers to get states to follow school reform policies that he supported.  Many of his critics argue that his federal overreach is excessive and has encroached on local and state authority to run public school districts as they see fit. The author of the following posts asks whether there has been too much federal overreach, or whether the administration has used its executive power in education in the wrong ways. This was written by Arthur H. Camins, director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. The ideas expressed in this article are his alone and do not represent Stevens Institute."

"For the past few months, we have been insisting, through this blog series, on the idea that education reform has a social dimension or level that often is overlooked in mainstream debate and policy. Under this broad theme, we've covered diverse issues ranging from how teachers' social capital can increase their human capital to how personnel churn can undermine reform efforts, or how too much individual talent can impede a team's overall performance. This collection of issues may prompt a number of important questions: What exactly is the "social side?" What are its key ideas? I would like to offer a few initial thoughts and share some resources that I've compiled."

"Overall, schools in poorer districts spent $8,733 per pupil less in 2012 than those from wealthier ones, an inequity that grew by nearly 9% from before Cuomo took office in 2011, according to the study by a coalition of education advocacy groups opposing many of the reforms pushed by Cuomo."

"Teachers faced an unprecedented level of scrutiny in 2014, thanks to a landmark legal case dismantling teacher tenure in California, which is likely to spark copycats lawsuits across the country. In part due to this increased scrutiny, educators also encountered various attacks from mainstream and conservative media over the year, five of which were particularly egregious."

"Lloyd Lofthouse notes the expansion of the charter sector in past decade-plus and wonders how this will affect public schools. We know from many state and city studies that charters don't outperform public schools and that many are run by for-profit corporations. No high-performing nation is embarked on the destruction of its public education system by imposing charters and vouchers and allowing non-educators to open schools."

""School choice" is one of those policy ideas that just never goes away, and it probably never will. For some people it is an irresistible way to unlock all those public tax dollars and turn them into private profits. For others it's a way to make sure their children don't have to go to school with "those people." Other people are justifiably attracted to the idea of more control over their child's education. And still others have a sincere belief that competition really does create greatness. Voucher fans and proponents of modern charters like to focus on those promises. They're much quieter about one of the other effects of a choice system. School choice disenfranchises the public."

"Science isn't important only to scientists or those who profess an interest in it. Whether you find fascinating every new discovery reported or you stopped taking science in school as soon as you could, a base level understanding is crucial for modern citizens to ground their engagement in the national conversation about science-related issues."