Is School Improvement Becoming a Crazy Beauty Pageant? � The Quick and the Ed

Is School Improvement Becoming a Crazy Beauty Pageant? � The Quick and the Ed

Is School Improvement Becoming a Crazy Beauty Pageant?

by Rob Manwaring

During my college year abroad, I had the unique experience of being asked to be the judge in a local beauty pageant on a remote island off the coast of Scotland. (Disclaimer – this experience in no way reflects the general fondness that I have for Scotland and their wonderful people). The first responsibility as a judge was to select the contestants for the pageant. Now young people on this island generally quickly moved to the mainland or got married, both of which disqualified them from the competition. I had no idea how hard it was to find people to actually compete in this contest, and after spending some time trying to find contestants, I was ready to choose anyone just to get it over with. And those that might have wanted to compete may not have gotten asked. The contest ended in disaster with the festival organizer’s daughter getting chosen as the queen with much speculation that the whole thing was rigged, and my best friend

2:40 PM (30 minutes ago)

Can Florida Race to the Top II Application Fix SB 6?

by Rob Manwaring

Earlier this month, Governor Crist vetoed SB 6, the most far reaching teacher reform bill this country has seen. Among other things, the bill would have eliminated tenure and the salary schedule, replacing them with annual contracts and compensation based on performance and shortage areas (hard to staff schools and subjects). Many others have written in detail on this bill and what it would have meant (See Ed Week, Randi Weingarten, Rich Hess, Foundation for Florida’s Future) While in my opinion this bill went to far in some areas, its existence creates a unique opportunity for the teacher’s union to seriously engage in developing a meaningful but more rational teacher reform package for the Race to the Top II application process. Here is why.
First in the Race to the Top I, Florida came in 4th place losing points for not having teacher buy-in. Given that

1:43 PM (1 hour ago)

QUICK Hits

by Forrest Hinton

Quick Hits is a short compilation of question-raising news stories, blog posts, and video clips that Education Sector team members are reading and viewing each day. The content of these Hits is not necessarily endorsed by the organization or any particular team member.

• If you don’t have the funds to attend college in the United States, the federal government will offer you loans and grants. But what do students from Peru and Cambodia do in similar situations?(Politics Daily)
• Is Teacher Tenure Still Necessary? (NPR)
• Peer Pressure: How can knowledgeable students inspire and motivate their classmates to attend college?(College Summit)
• What makes Cato’s Neal McCluskey so pessimistic about RTT? He even uses the word “unconstitutional!” (Cato@Liberty)
• Speaking of RTT, what’s happening with the teacher evaluation bill, SB 191, out in Colorado? (The Denver Post)
• Happy Birthday, Nancy Drew. Is it 80 now? (Christian Science Monitor)