February 23, 2009
CER’s recent monograph, Mandate for Change, pinpoints teacher quality as one in a five-part prescription for what ails public education in America today. Richard Whitmire’s essay lays out a compelling argument for addressing the way teachers are evaluated, cautioning “Effective teachers make a difference and the current system does next to nothing to reward effective […]
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February 20, 2009
Guadalupe Sandoval, a junior at Serra High School in San Diego, CA has had a lot of time to think about teachers and the impact they have on her and other students. Her parents have chosen to send her to a school outside of her neighborhood based on teacher quality (or lack there of). Her […]
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February 14, 2009
District superintendents around the country – who will be the first port of call for the education stimulus funds – seem to want more than what is already a pretty substantial influx of money. They have their eyes set on the Education Secretary’s discretionary fund (his “Race to the Top Fund”), money that is supposed […]
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February 13, 2009
All stimulus—all the time. There is nothing like a raucous action film filled with exploding cars and high-powered weaponry to distract you from your troubles and take your mind off your real obligations back home. Like it or not, this is the net effect of the Stimulus package now furiously hurdling through Congress like some […]
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February 9, 2009
Seemingly always the last question asked in the political arena, President Obama was queried by 9-year-old James earlier during his Elkhart, IN town hall meeting. James asked how the President planned to help our schools. His laundry list of solutions: – Rebuild schools to be state-of-the-art – Train new teachers (and re-train existing ones) – […]
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February 3, 2009
(In light of the impending stimulus package making the rounds on Capitol Hill, the following is a riff on remarks made by President Barack Obama following a meeting with his education economic team. The original can be read in its entirety on the official White House blog.) One point I want to make is that […]
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January 14, 2009
Andy Rotherham (via Eduwonk) has some fun dissecting today’s New York Times article on the unionization process within two Brooklyn-based KIPP charter schools (“Teachers at 2 Charter Schools Plan to Join Union, Despite Notion of Incompatibility“): First, Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform says that “A union contract is actually at odds with […]
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January 14, 2009
Knowledge is power, KIPP’s moniker, might need to be more aptly applied to the parent company’s involvement and understanding of local school issues. The knowledge of what was afoot in two more of their NYC schools to convince teachers there to unionize may have helped them avert the rising mediocrity that will no doubt color […]
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January 6, 2009
Just as Jimmy Stewart’s Jefferson Smith did upon his cinematic arrival in Washington, this year’s Capitol newbies will encounter the three major political “food” groups – The Know-It Alls, The Pessimists and The Relativists. If they are lucky, or smart, or just plain good, they may find themselves associating with a lesser known but more […]
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January 5, 2009
At one point in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the legendary film by Frank Capra, the lead character (played by Jimmy Stewart) arrives as a new Senator from Illinois and finds himself sitting with his senior peer and the state’s political bosses. They tell him how Washington works, that for the good of his career […]
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