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Thursday, April 15, 2010

Education - Everything you need to know about the world of education.

Education - Everything you need to know about the world of education.
















VALERIE STRAUSS
A School Survival Guide for Parents (And Everyone Else)

Posted at 6:30 AM ET, 04/15/2010

When school reform made teachers sick -- literally

There is a story in Diane Ravitch’s new book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” that policymakers should be forced to read whenever they are imposing yet another school reform plan on a beleaguered school district. It is about school reform implemented so forefully that teachers got sick. Not sick and tired of being told what to do by people who had never been in front of a classroom, but physically ill.
JAY MATHEWS
What's Right and Wrong With Our Schools

Posted at 10:00 PM ET, 04/14/2010

Washington area's top education bloggers

Several weeks ago, my blogging colleague Valerie Strauss (The Answer Sheet) and I announced our picks for best education blogs of this year. Our favorites were a diverse bunch, with many witty teachers, incisive journalists and droll experts of other kinds providing unusual perspectives. But Washington area education bloggers were severely underrepresented. I found only two, one in Fairfax County and one in the District, who had the acidity and depth I craved.

The $34 million question

So does the $34 million surplus Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee described to the D.C. Council Tuesday actually exist?
This is the money she said was now available in the FY 2010 budget, three months after laying off 266 teachers, to underwrite part of the five-year, 20 percent pay package in the proposed labor contract. It's ultimately up to Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi to make that call.
Rhee said again Wednesday night that she has been assured by a staff analysis that the cash was there. But e-mails obtained by D.C. Schools Insider show that as recently as March 31, one week before the tentative agreement was announced, Rhee was raising significant doubts about the existence of the windfall.
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