The Educated Reporter: Radio silence on special ed.

The Educated Reporter: Radio silence on special ed.

Radio silence on special ed.

by Linda Perlstein

I mentioned last month that special ed identifications seem to be leveling off or even decreasing. Mike Petrilli at Flypaper offers some perspective; he is inclined to think that Reading First and Response to Intervention are behind this shift. Commenters to both our posts ask whether districts are refusing in greater numbers to provide special ed services to students who really need it. That suspicions differ so greatly on the reasons makes it all

TER goes the the movies: “Waiting for Superman.”

by Linda Perlstein

When Davis Guggenheim spoke at the EWA conference in May about his education reform documentary“Waiting for Superman,” he said, “This really is not about ‘charters good, mainstream bad.’” Yet anyone who has seen the film, as I did yesterday, would say it is constructed precisely that way: A set of children waits to find out if they get into the charter schools that we are led to believe are the only hope for them. Unfortunately we don’t get to see for ourselves what is so lousy about these kids’ current schools or even what is great about the ones they aspire to, which is a shame. Guggenheim gives us data on outcomes but really only brings us into bad classrooms via clips from “The Simpsons” and “School of Rock.” Surely Michelle Rhee, who let cameras film