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Over the weekend, the New York Times published an article about the growing fight over charter schools in suburban districts. The story focuses on Milburn, New Jersey where the median family household income is $159,000 (yeah, that’s not a typo). Charter opponents provide the typical anti-charter school rhetoric – drains money, the local schools are […] Read more »

Indianapolis Public Schools launched a campaign this month going door to door to try and bring back nearly 5,000 dropouts ranging from ages 7 to 23. It’s a positive effort that’s for sure – especially in a district that has a dropout rate of 24.6 percent. But don’t get too high on that horse just […] Read more »

Ayn Marie Samuelson and Beatrice Davis Fowler come out swinging with their book Exposing the Public Education System, bringing to bear a glut of anecdotal and statistical evidence upon the issue of why so much money is spent on the United State’s public education with such mediocre to poor results. The root problem, they urge, […] Read more »

Have you ever been late to your own party and then botched it on the food, drinks and decorations? This weekend the National Education Association voted to allow student performance to be included in teacher evaluations. Yay, it’s about time! I never thought that would happen. It’s good to finally seeing the NEA take some… […] Read more »

Hmm. Why do I get the sneaking suspicion that I have heard this before? Oh, I know. We wrote about it back on June 14 (Creative Non-Compliance). The issue at hand is Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s disregard for federal law and his willingness to circumvent NCLB to grant conditional waivers to states and schools […] Read more »

History is an important aspect of life to understand. Knowing what transpired and why, who was involved and why they did what they did, drives us to emulate that which is good, and, hopefully, learn from mistakes. That’s why I ask my colleagues to appreciate, as well as tolerate, my concern over a public tribute […] Read more »

Illinois’ education blob is giving themselves a pat on the back. Their “collaboration” helped pass a bill, almost unanimously, that institutes some form of teacher evaluations based on “multiple measures” yet to be defined, and changes tenure rules, slightly. There are longer school days, strike rules requiring 75 percent of teachers to agree, but not […] Read more »

I usually like this term. It means we might as well bend some rules, if the need justifies it, and normally, this term is associated with good deeds. But, Secretary Arne Duncan’s attempt to start creatively non-complying with NCLB may not be about good deeds, as much as he suggests it is. Throughout the weekend, […] Read more »

There is a bill moving through the New Jersey Assembly that is particularly lousy, in part due to its specious language, but mainly because it facilitates the status quo by hampering the incentive for charter schools to do what they do best: innovate. The piece of legislation (A 3852) seeks to put any and all […] Read more »

Georgia’s high court recently struck down HB 881, a 2008 revision to the state’s charter law which empowered a new commission to approve charters, putting a dozen new schools and thousands of children in jeopardy. Was the court right that this conflicts with the constitution? Well, it does if you consider that the legislature in GA […] Read more »