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Neel Kashkari: This commentary was first published in the Star Tribune. Today, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis released a comprehensive report on the performance of Minnesota K-12 schools in preparing our children for their futures. On average Minnesota schools perform well compared with other states. Unfortunately, those averages mask some of the worst educational […]
Matthew Ladner: Americans thus seem to see their public education system as falling short in a variety of ways and aren’t especially optimistic about future improvement. Republicans exhibited the greatest amount of optimism, with 24 percent forecasting that the American public school system would be a “model of excellence around the world” in 20 years. […]
Citizen Stewart: My friends at the Network of Public Education (NOPE) have an ongoing series under the hashtag #AnotherDayAnotherCharterSchool that aims to keep your eyes trained on the supposed never-ending abuses and fraud case in charter schools. I applaud their commitment to public integrity and I share their vigilance in rooting out grift in public […]
Chris Stewart: When you emerged as a young, talented, highly educated leader years ago public schools in this country were miseducating black children en masse. Today, as you run for president that problem continues. But something changed between the you back then and the you today: your relationship with truth. In a time when too […]
Dale Russakoff: HOW THE OTHER HALF LEARNS Equality, Excellence, and the Battle Over School Choice By Robert Pondiscio Every fall, astonishing news emerges from Success Academy, the largest and most controversial charter school network in New York City. With considerable fanfare, the network announces that its predominantly low-income and minority students have once again defied […]
Katy Reckdahl: Two years ago, Nathaniel Albert walked into a first grade classroom at Andrew H. Wilson Charter School in New Orleans and quietly made connections with children. Soon, he became an indispensable part of their school day. “When he wasn’t there, the students would ask, ‘Where were you?’ ” said teacher Kierston James, 40, […]
Brian Howard: On the Expectations We Place on Kids “Most parents believe their children are smarter than they actually are. On the plus side, children will often rise to the occasion. Conversely, some parents believe their children can skip certain parts of the curriculum, creating major gaps.” — A teacher at a Montgomery County public […]
Jason Riley: To say that many liberal elites have all but given up on educating low-income minorities might seem like an overstatement. But when you consider the state of public education in our inner cities, and the priorities of those in charge, it’s hard to draw any other conclusion. After Labor Day, New York City’s […]
Bob McManus: The City University of New York has announced plans to eliminate objective testing intended to determine which of its incoming students can do college-level work and which require remediation. Politico reports that CUNY chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez plans to move the university “away from high-stakes testing” while “reducing its reliance on placement tests […]
mp3 audio – Machine Transcript follows [Better transcript, via a kind reader PDF]: I’m Carousel Baird and we have a fabulous and exciting show lined up today. Such a fabulous guy sitting right across from me right here in the studio. Is Madison metropolitan school district current superintendent? She still here in charge of all […]
Citizen Stewart: Ravitch, by contrast, has fallen irreparably into polemics so much that her daily blogs put her in league with Alex Jones’ made-for-YouTube Info Wars. Along those lines, her blog-fart today ties “the charter industry” to the “infamous pedophile and “super-rich” Jeffrey Epstein. “In 2013, his foundation issued a press release announcing that he […]
Joel Kotkin: Perhaps no issue more motivates progressive activists than social justice. Good intentions may motivate the social justice warriors, albeit sometimes sprinkled with a dollop of self-hatred. But good intentions do not necessarily produce good results. Indeed, often the policies favored by progressive idealists hinder the economic and social progress of the very people […]
Dianna Douglas: Public schools in gentrifying neighborhoods seem on the cusp of becoming truly diverse, as historically underserved neighborhoods fill up with younger, whiter families. But the schools remain stubbornly segregated. Nikole Hannah-Jones has chronicled this phenomenon around the country, and seen it firsthand in her neighborhood in Brooklyn. “White communities want neighborhood schools if […]
Bethany Blankley: While 59 percent of respondents supported Evers’ plan to increase public school funding by $1.4 billion, support fell to 39 percent when respondents learned the increase in spending comes with no academic accountability, the polls found. In response to Evers’ budget proposal, Madison–Co-chairs of the Joint Committee on Finance, Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, […]
Negassi Tesfamichael: However, the group said support dipped once additional information on current spending levels and other information about the budget was included. The poll found only a third of respondents supported Evers’ proposal to freeze the growth of private school vouchers and independent charter schools. The poll found a majority of support for public […]
Jessie Opoien: WILL’s most likely battle with Evers, Esenberg said, is over administrative rules — a “fight that only a wonk could love.” As Evers seeks to implement policies with a Republican Legislature opposed to most of his goals, he could direct state agencies to implement administrative rules — most of which WILL would be […]
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction “DPI”, lead for many years by new Governor Tony Evers, has waived thousands of elementary reading teacher content knowledge requirements. This, despite our long term, disastrous reading results. Chan Stroman tracks the frequent Foundations of Reading (FoRT) mulligans: Yet the statutory FoRT requirement is now deemed satisfied by “attempts” […]
Bethany Blankely: “Will massive increases in spending actually improve student outcomes?” WILL asks. According to an analysis of education spending and outcomes, WILL says, “probably not.” WILL’s Truth in Spending: An Analysis of K-12 Spending in Wisconsin compares K-12 spending on Wisconsin public schools and student outcomes. Based on the most recent available data, Wisconsin’s […]
Frederick Hess: Here’s another way to look at this: This isn’t an indictment of America but of the elite college cartel and the pathologies that it has enabled and exploited. It’s an indictment of the way elite colleges sell fast-passes to lucrative jobs on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, of the manufactured scarcity that […]
Corey DeAngelis and Will Flanders: Despite the fact that improvement to the overall educational marketplace is one of the hallmark arguments of advocates for school choice, few evaluations have focused on the supply and demand within the education marketplace in a school choice environment. Because traditional public schools are not subject to the same level […]
Negassi Tesfamichael: In the Seat 4 race, candidate David Blaska has said there should be a drive-through window at the Doyle Administration Building to approve more charter schools. His opponent, Ali Muldrow — who was endorsed by the influential Madison Teachers Inc. before the Feb. 19 primary — has two children who attend Isthmus Montessori […]
Logan Wroge: The Democratic governor included the funding formula revision in his executive budget released Thursday. As state superintendent during four previous budgets, Evers sought to shake up the formula to deliver more funding to high poverty and rural school districts, but former Gov. Scott Walker did not advance the proposal. After narrowly beating Walker […]
Wall Street Journal: Readers who still think teachers are striking over money should look at what just happened in West Virginia. A year after the state’s 20,000 teachers struck to get a 5% pay raise and no reductions in rich benefits, they walked off the job Tuesday to kill an education reform bill that would […]
Will Flanders: Perhaps the most egregious omissions are in the discussion of school funding and its effect on student outcomes. While the author cites one study – not yet peer-reviewed — the preponderance of evidence for decades has suggested little to no impact of per-student funding on educational achievement. This study, and others like it […]
Mike Antonucci: Public education employees are up in arms again in West Virginia, this time over SB 451, a pay raise bill that also contains numerous provisions that are anathema to teacher unions – charter schools, education savings accounts and annual reauthorization of dues deductions. There is a lot of speculation that if the bill […]
Erin Hinrichs: “Minnesota has a state of emergency regarding literacy. I’m very disappointed with where we’re at right now with the persistent reading success gap between white students and students of color,” he said Wednesday. “We are not making adequate progress, and the future of tens of thousands of our students is seriously at risk […]
Christopher Osher: But districts are free to use their READ Act per-pupil funds on whatever curriculum they want, even on interventions researchers have found ineffective. “Typically, as with any education policy, we’re only given so much authority on what we can tell districts to do and what we monitor for,” Colsman said in an interview […]
Alan Borsuk: The Milwaukee School Board’s version of Carmen, which played out over three evenings in the last three weeks, also attracted large audiences. But it was definitely lacking in love. It had some resemblance to a bullfight. I couldn’t find anything comic about it. I’d rate it pretty low for entertainment value. I’d rather […]
Will Flanders: The News: January 20-26 marks National School Choice Week, a week-long celebration of the progress made across the country in providing parents with education options. WILL is celebrating National School Choice Week by releasing a short summary of facts about school choice in Wisconsin. All week we’ll be profiling private schools participating in […]
Citizen Stewart: I got an email from an @AP reporter. The subject: “black charter schools debate.” It said: “This is Sally Ho, national education reporter with the Associated Press. I am working on a story about the black charter school debate in light of increasing enrollment in the community.” When we talked Ho framed the […]
Laurie Frost and Heff Henriques: Children who are not proficient readers by fourth grade are four times more likely to drop out of school. Additionally, two-thirds of them will end up in prison or on welfare. Though these dismal trajectories are well known, Madison School District’s reading scores for minority students remain unconscionably low and […]
Neil Heinen: There is so much to like about One City’s structure and operation, starting with founder, President and CEO Kaleem Caire. Caire’s bedrock passion for education has always been part of what hasn’t always been a straight-line career path. But all of the elements of his business, civic, nonprofit and activist education ventures have […]
The Grade: There are two main reasons why Eliza Shapiro’s New York Times piece, Why Black Parents Are Turning to Afrocentric Schools, is this week’s best. The first is that it’s a really well-written piece of journalism. The second is that it addresses an important and previously under-covered topic: parents of color interested in alternatives […]
Dean Mosiman: The candidates are focusing on racial and economic inequities and the need for more low-cost housing despite a Soglin initiative supported by the City Council that’s delivered 1,000 lower-cost units. And they are talking about education, health care, transportation, public safety and climate change, especially in the wake of severe flooding that punished […]
Chris Rickert: In June, after she’d lost her bid for a second term on the board, Moffit emailed district general counsel Matthew Bell and executive director of student services John Harper a copy of a letter sent to a prospective Shabazz student letting the student’s family know that the student hadn’t met the criteria for […]
Chris Rickert: In March 2016, Cheatham said that it was her intent to make OEO “obsolete — that our schools will be serving students so well that there isn’t a need.” Since then, the district has tried to keep tabs on any new charter proposals for Madison, going so far as to send former School […]
Alan Borsuk: 20 percent. That is roughly the percentage of Milwaukee students, both in public and private schools, who were rated proficient or advanced in reading in tests in spring 2018 — and it’s about the same figure as every year for many years. Folks, we have a huge reading crisis. There may be more […]
Chris Rickert: Meanwhile, in a sign of how the Madison district is responding to subsequent charter applications, former Madison School Board member Ed Hughes said he went before the Goodman Community Center’s board on the district’s behalf on Sept. 24 to express the district’s opposition to another proposed non-district charter school, Arbor Community School, which […]
Isaac Stanley-Becker: This racial and political disparity is among the discoveries made by a pair of social psychologists in a paper forthcoming in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Psychological Association. Cydney Dupree, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management, and […]
Cathleen Draper: “It was a lot of talk,” Johnson said. “[There’s] a lot of good people doing a lot of good things, but systemically, when you look at the data, things are not getting better. Systemically, we’re still operating in silos.” Before leaving Madison, Johnson called for greater funding and committed community leadership. He cited […]
Will Flanders: Less discussed in Wisconsin is the tremendous impact that economic status has on student achievement. A school with a population of 100% students who are economically disadvantaged would be expected to have proficiency rates more than 40% lower than a school with wealthier students. Indeed, this economics achievement gap is far larger in […]
Molly Beck and Erin Richards: “We set a high bar for achievement,” DPI spokesman Tom McCarthy said. “To reach more than half (proficiency), we would need to raise the achievement of our lowest district and subgroup performers through policies like those recommended in our budget, targeted at the large, urban districts.” The new scores reveal […]
CBS News: Our series, School Matters, features extended stories and investigations on education. In this installment, we’re looking at a lawsuit winding its way through the federal appeals process that questions whether access to literacy is a constitutional right. A federal judge in Michigan recently ruled it wasn’t when he dismissed a 2016 case. That […]
David Dahmer: How can this be, in a “unversity town”? It’s true, some more affluent people reside in this city due to the existence of a large, world-class university. People with more money do create disparities. Does that explain the exodus of brown and black professionals when they complete their four years at the university […]
Jared Diamond: these stories of isolated societies illustrate two general principles about relations between human group size and innovation or creativity. First, in any society except a totally isolated society, most innovations come in from the outside, rather than being conceived within that society. And secondly, any society undergoes local fads. By fads I mean […]
Citizen Stewart: When we talk dollars and cents in public education, there are a few truisms: teachers are paid too little, schools are underfunded, private and charter schools “drain” funds from traditional districts, and when schools can’t make ends meet it is the result of things done to them and never stuff they do. The […]
Emily Hanford: Balanced literacy was a way to defuse the wars over reading,” said Mark Seidenberg, a cognitive neuroscientist and author of the book “Language at the Speed of Sight.” “It succeeded in keeping the science at bay, and it allowed things to continue as before.” He says the reading wars are over, and science […]
Molly Beck: But Walker and his campaign accused Evers of flip-flopping on the issue of school funding because Evers once said in an interview with WisconsinEye that improving academic outcomes for students struggling the most could still be achieved even if the state didn’t provide a significant funding increase. Evers in the interview did say […]
Francis Turner: The argument for public education is that it is good for society as a whole to have its children educated so that they can successfully take their place in it, contribute to it and so on. This has historically been understood to mean that we expect our children to learn the 3Rs, get […]
Tim Harford: Internal politics soon asserted itself. A case study co-authored by Henderson describes the PC division as “smothered by support from the parent company”. Eventually, the IBM PC business was sold off to a Chinese company, Lenovo. What had flummoxed IBM was not the pace of technological change — it had long coped with […]
Matthew DeFour: Soglin offered some of the sharpest zingers aimed at Walker. Asked how he would “undo the damage Walker has done to public education,” Soglin said, “We understand the purpose of education is not a career and a technical job, the purpose of an education is to teach young people how to think, which […]
WILL: on K-12 Education Reform In almost every context, words matter. Public opinion on particular issues can shift greatly depending on the language used, and K-12 education reform is no exception. To help further understand this, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty commissioned Research Now Survey Sampling International to conduct a statewide survey experiment […]
A majority of the Madison school board has long opposed K-12 governance diversity including the rejection of a proposed Madison preparatory academy IB charter school. Steven Elbow: Two Madison charter schools will start the school year with additional funds awarded from the state Department of Public Instruction. Isthmus Montessori Academy (rejected by the Madison School […]
Alice Lloyd: “A lot of [the core curriculum] touches on questions essential to how people organize in society,” said one recent graduate, now working in the Trump administration. As a Hillsdale student reading Aristotle’s Politics, “It’s natural that you’d be thinking about how good government works”—and that you might wind up working in government yourself. […]
One City Schools, via a kind Kaleem Caire email: On Monday May 7, the Pahara and Aspen Institutes announced a new class of leaders that were selected to participate in the distinguished Pahara-Aspen Education Fellowship. One City’s Founder and CEO, Kaleem Caire, will join 23 other leaders in this highly prized two-year fellowship program. The […]
Robert Pondisco: “The effectiveness of public schools in developing engaged citizens has rarely been examined empirically,” notes a new Mathematica report on the impact on civic participation of Democracy Prep, a network of charter schools that educates more than 5,000 students, mostly in New York City. Perhaps not, but it’s certainly been assumed. We remain […]
Jerry Z Muller: Organisations in thrall to metrics end up motivating those members of staff with greater initiative to move out of the mainstream, where the culture of accountable performance prevails. Teachers move out of public schools to private and charter schools. Engineers move out of large corporations to boutique firms. Enterprising government employees become […]
The Economist: WHEN the gunshots sounded outside Houston Elementary School, Rembert Seaward and Darryl Webster, the principal and the school social worker, scrambled to the ground and ducked for cover. But one young pupil remained standing and then started to laugh—“It’s nothing but some gunshots,” they recall him saying. He told them that he would […]
Elizabeth Harrington: Teachers’ union president Randi Weingarten is plotting a teachers’ strike to shut down schools in Puerto Rico, according to a conversation overheard Friday in the first-class car of an Acela train heading to New York. Puerto Rico is in the midst of implementing school-choice reforms, opposed by Weingarten’s American Federation of Teachers. Last […]
Natalie Wexler: Cognitive scientists have known for decades that simply mastering comprehension skills doesn’t ensure a young student will be able to apply them to whatever texts they’re confronted with on standardized tests and in their studies later in life. One of those cognitive scientists spoke on the Tuesday panel: Daniel Willingham, a psychology professor […]
Andy Kroll: One of Brown’s favorite sayings is Age quod agis, a Latin phrase he learned while training to be a Jesuit priest. It means: Do what you’re doing. Don’t traffic in nostalgia. Don’t fantasize about what’s next. For a man who has heeded these rules, it is striking how much he has devoted his […]
Laura Waters: A new report is out called “New Jersey Charter Schools: A Data-Driven View – 2018 Update, Part I” by Julia Sass Rubin and Mark Weber. This study, draped with a Rutgers University banner, purports to be a scholarly analysis proving that charter schools are an untenable fiscal burden on traditional districts and enroll […]
The Takeaway: Betsy DeVos was thrust into the spotlight this weekend on an episode 60 Minutes, as she struggled to give satisfying answers to interviewer Lesley Stahl. DeVos has been appearing on several news programs recently, as the federal government assigned the secretary of education to head up a federal commission on school safety. Long […]
David Arsen, Thomas A. DeLuca, Yongmei Ni and Michael Bates: Like other states, Michigan has implemented a number of policies to change governance and administrative arrangements in local school districts deem to be in financial emergency. This paper examines two questions: (1) Which districts get into financial trouble and why? and (2) Among fiscally distressed […]
Mike Antonucci: But for the moment let’s suppose you were an exemplary New Mexico teacher paying agency fees to your exclusive bargaining agent. Then you read this: This week, Gov. Susana Martinez signed off on a budget bill that provides for $5,000 and $10,000 bonuses for exemplary teachers in New Mexico. And while she used […]
Jonathan Chait: On February 17, 2009, Barack Obama signed one of the most sweeping federal education reforms in American history. You may not have heard of it. His program was a federal grant, called “Race to the Top,” which was doled out on a competitive basis. If states wanted the money, they needed to implement […]
Michael McShane: Almost any article on Catholic schooling today will have at least one paragraph in it describing the last five decades’ decline in both the number of Catholic schools and the number of students attending them. At this point, the factors are well known: fewer priests and religious staff working in schools, Catholics becoming […]
Leah Mishkin, via a kind reader: Students at People’s Preparatory Charter School in Newark are getting on buses to visit different colleges and universities in the tri-state area. It’s something they do a couple times a year. “My brother, he didn’t go to college, so I want to be the first one to go to […]
Philissa Cramer: Who should succeed Carmen Fariña as New York City schools chief? Eva Moskowitz, the charter school CEO who runs a small-district-sized network within the city, has some ideas. Less than a day after news broke that Fariña would step down in early 2018, Moskowitz distributed a list of 14 people she sees as […]
Molly Beck: Children living in low-income households who are considered to be advanced learners will be eligible to receive a taxpayer-funded scholarship to use to pay for education expenses under a new program proposed by three lawmakers this week. The scholarship program would provide $1,000 to families with “gifted and talented” students who are already […]
Rebecca Mead: One of the most celebrated educational experiments in history was performed by James Mill, the British historian, on his eldest son, John Stuart Mill, who was born outside London in 1806. John began learning Greek when he was three, and read Herodotus and other historians and philosophers before commencing Latin, at the age […]
Peter Cook: Now, guess who put up the money for this research? It just so happens that there might be a reason why this research is so misleading: it was largely funded by the teachers unions. As I’ve documented previously, AFT and NEA have been heavily promoting community schools as an alternative to charter schools […]
Vesia Hawkins: The Associated Press’ story blaming charter schools for re-segregating schools has the ed reform community in a tizzy. Thought-leaders, policymakers, and advocates have lit up Twitter, and rightfully so, crying foul about a story that supports the tragically irresponsible claim made by the NAACP and AFT (American Federation of Teachers union) last summer. […]
Jennifer C. Berkshire : In a Facebook post this summer, hedge fund billionaire Daniel Loeb took aim at the highest ranking Black woman in the New York legislator, Andrea Stewart-Cousins. “[H]ypocrites like Stewart-Cousins who pay fealty to powerful union thugs and bosses,” wrote Loeb, “do more damage to people of color than anyone who has […]
The Economist: Chalkbeat, an education news organisation, reported that political committees on both sides of the dispute channelled at least $1.65m into the school-board races that took place on November 7th in Denver, nearby Aurora and Douglas County. Other areas have seen even more expensive contests. In Los Angeles, where three board seats came up […]
Jacqueline Drayer: Across the street from the Stadium-Armory Metro Station is perhaps the most carefully-considered school design in DC. St. Coletta of Greater Washington is a non-profit public charter school serving children and adults with intellectual disabilities. Its campus was designed by famed architect Michael Graves, who drew on discussion with and feedback from the […]
Daniel Borenstein: In Alameda, an island community with a long history of strong labor influence, the city manager could lose her job because she resisted political pressure to hire a union leader as fire chief. The people who probably should be removed from City Hall are council members Malia Vella and Jim Oddie, who apparently […]
Chris Rickert:: It seemed appropriate to look at the Madison School District first, given that on Tuesday, two Madison School Board members, Anna Moffit and Nicki Vander Meulen, took to Facebook in support of Johnson’s Fitchburg grievance. Invoking Martin Luther King Jr.’s observation that “history will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this […]
Robby Soave: Last week, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos visited Harvard University’s Institute of Politics to discuss her school choice agenda. Students in the audience interrupted her several times; some even held up a sign accusing her of being a “white supremacist.” The irony, of course, is twofold. One, the subject of DeVos’s Harvard address—school choice—is […]
“Bennett said he continues to work closely with the district, noting he recently met with district lawyer Dylan Pauly to work out an agreement for the internal sharing and public posting of any Madison charter school applications that are submitted. Proposals are to be posted on the district’s website within two weeks of the submission […]
Former Madison School Board candidate Ali Muldrow, speaking yesterday on WORT-FM’s A Public Affair (MP3 audio) – via a kind reader. Madison has long spent far more than most government funded school districts (now nearly $20,000 per student), yet we’ve long tolerated disastrous reading results. They are all rich white kids and they will do […]
Andrew O’Hehir: Moskowitz is a powerful and unrepentant example of the oft-derided species “neoliberal,” signifying a belief in market-driven solutions, public-private partnerships and some degree of government downsizing and deregulation. (Most of her New York political battles have involved attempts to limit or shackle the immensely powerful teachers’ unions.) A longtime ally of former New […]
We hope that our commitments set forth here will inspire you to make a similar commitment to do the job you were each elected to do. We look forward to seeing you commit to a focus on ensuring that ALL Nashville children have the ability to attend great public schools. We look forward to the […]
Chris Rickert: I’d like to believe that the “us” in that statement refers not just to the adults who run and work in the schools, but the children who attend them. Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending more than most, now nearly $20,000 per student annually. A majority of the Madison School […]
Sarah Favot: The election is 10 months away, but the two candidates for the state superintendent of schools have together raised more than $2 million. Marshall Tuck, who narrowly lost the 2014 contest against Tom Torlakson, leads in fundraising, reporting $1.2 million in contributions from Jan. 1 through June 30, according to the latest reports […]
Madison School Board President James Howard’s remarks prior to the recent Montessori “charter” school contract vote (which failed 3-4). Well worth watching. Madison lacks K-12 governance diversity. A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Preporatory Academy IB Charter School. Madison spends more than most, now nearly $20,000 per student, while tolerating long […]
relinquishment: Mathematica just published a study on KIPP pre-k. The Laura and John Arnold Foundation (where I work) funded the study. The study was well designed and asked a very important question: does high-quality charter pre-k provide benefits above and beyond simply attending a high-quality charter elementary school? The policy implications of this question are […]
Chris Rickert: I’m guessing there are a lot of parents of black students in Madison who would be happy to have greater access to a Madison public school that works well for their children, rather than wait for the “best” to maybe come along some day. Instead, while Madison has made closing the racial achievement […]
C.J. Szafir and Libby Sobic , via a kind email: Today state legislators all over the country are deciding how to comply with ESSA. When the last deadline for submitting proposals arrives this September, we may see a crop of promising plans for the future of K-12 education. Yet in Wisconsin, the planning process has […]
Mark Bonamo, via a kind email: In a few weeks, more than 750 Newark Public School students will be entering second grade better prepared to read proficiently thanks to an innovative program between the district one of the city’s highest performing charter schools. Over the summer, the students attended the “Rising Second Grade” program, a […]
Paul Fanlund: For example? “If you’re looking for the simplest examples, we weren’t consistently teaching students the fundamentals of reading in the earliest grades. We weren’t teaching phonics consistently in the early grades, and then you wonder why students aren’t attaining the skills, the basic skills … the foundational skills of reading. We still have […]
Citizen Stewart The NAACP report finally acknowledges the education nightmare many parents and their children face in our public education system. For far too long, low-income and working-class Black families have been ill-served by a system that, from the very beginning, was never created with the interest of Black children in mind. We also agree […]
Citizen Stewart: In all my writing about public schools you’ll find a consistent claim that public schools are insufficient to the task of educating black children. That message angers people, especially those working in district public schools who feel under “attack” by big money school reformers who want to “privatize” public education. Often I publish […]
Jason Allen: I’ve heard it all before… and hearing it now still doesn’t change the idea that racism has been exploited to block educational reform. Here’s why I say this. I’m a long time support and member of the NAACP. I believe in the mission, the legacy and those committed, on the ground workers. I […]
Molly Beck: The office’s first charter school will be one aimed at helping teenagers recover from drug abuse, which was created by legislation passed this year. It will likely open next year. Two UW System schools and other entities can now create charter schools throughout the state. The Senate budget would let Bennett’s office, any […]
Alina Adams: Last week, New York City schools received two pieces of contradictory news, which made for an interesting contrast in how teachers are viewed. In the first, the Department of Education will now require principals to staff vacancies with teachers from the Absent Teacher Reserve, also known as “the rubber room,” where pedagogues who […]
Jay Matthews: In a compelling piece for the Washington City Paper, D.C. high school teacher Rob Barnett has confessed his anguish at passing students who haven’t mastered the content of his math courses and described his radical solution. It’s called mastery learning. Barnett recorded all of his lessons, put them online and let each student […]
Second line: Let me begin by stating that I am a strong proponent for having more teachers that are representative and reflective of the population that it serves. I believe race match is a significant and valuable contributor to student performance and success. Translation: black teachers + black kids = potentially more support and opportunities. […]
Jen Curtis: In California, once home to the nation’s most-prized higher education system, the stress of college starts early. “Even at the middle school level, there is pressure,” says Jessica Lura, director of strategic initiatives and partnerships at the K-8 Bullis Charter School in Los Altos, Calif. “Parents worry their child is going to fall […]
Ed Reform: If education reformers are honest with one another, we must admit that our efforts have a hit a wall, according to a new book published today by the Center for Education Reform. The hard reality is, more was accomplished in the first nine years of the movement than in the past 16. Charting […]