Latest Articles and Blog Posts
Why Tony Bennett Is a Stud
April 23, 2010 at 9:38 am
Even as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan shills for Senator Tom Harkin's pander-ific, NEA-endorsed $23 billion "Keep Our Educators Working Act of 2010," the costs of his earlier efforts to curry NEA support are accumulating. His support for Harkin's no-strings-attached cash shower is trivializing the relatively puny $3.4 billion he's got left to dole out in round two of Race to the Top (RTT). Meanwhile, there is growing evidence that his earlier efforts to cultivate union support by spotlighting his commitment to buy-in have emboldened state and local unions.
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Why Santa Claus Isn't a School Reform Icon
April 22, 2010 at 9:27 am
Even as our earnest Secretary of Education Arne Duncan enthusiastically embraces Senator Tom Harkin's pander-refic $23 billion "Keep Our Educators Working Act of 2010" (don't worry, the 2011 version is sure to visit a theater near you in due course), he's insisting that this development won't compromise his credibility or effectiveness as a reformer.
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The Value of Value-Added
April 21, 2010 at 9:52 am
I've been meaning to do a longer postmortem on Florida's Senate Bill 6. As I've noted before, I enthusiastically supported it even though I thought it a deeply flawed bill. The flaw? Its ham-fisted attempt to strip out one set of anachronistic strictures (governing tenure and step-and-lane pay scales) only to replace it with a set of test-driven processes that were almost equally troubling.
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Big Week for the NEA
April 20, 2010 • National Review Online
Last week had two red-letter days for the National Education Association, as Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan opted, at crucial moments, to forsake reform and preen for easy applause from the cheap seats.
The result: two substantial setbacks for those who believe we need to rethink teacher tenure, evaluation, and pay, and who believe K–12 schooling needs to stop mortgaging the future of the kids it's supposed to serve.