UPDATE: Perdido Street School: Washington Post: Firing Teachers Hasn't Turned Around D.C. Schools

Perdido Street School: Washington Post: Firing Teachers Hasn't Turned Around D.C. Schools:

Bloomberg Administration Lies About The 911 System Problems

by reality-based educator

From Juan Gonzalez in the Daily News:

An Emergency Medical Service worker whom city officials blame for missing a 911 call that led to a four-minute delay in getting an ambulance to a child hit by an SUV insists no such call ever came over her computer screen.

City officials say “human error” by that lone dispatcher, and not glitches in the new 911 dispatch system, slowed the ambulance response after Ariel Russo, 4, was fatally struck June 4 on the upper West Side by an unlicensed teen fleeing police.

But EMS sources and internal logs obtained by the Daily News tell a different story, raising more 

Washington Post: Firing Teachers Hasn't Turned Around D.C. Schools

by reality-based educator

Here's something novel - the Washington Post reporting that school reform is more complicated than getting a broom and sweeping out all the so-called "bad teachers":

D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson called it a “fresh start” and a “momentum-shifter” for Cardozo Senior High last month when administrators removed nearly half the staff at the school.
Henderson had used her power to “reconstitute” the struggling school, requiring the entire staff to reapply for their positions. It is a dramatic response to chronically low achievement, built on a philosophy that has driven D.C. school restructuring in recent years, first under Michelle Rhee and now under Henderson: Clear out poor educators and handpick a set of new ones to transform a school’s culture and performance.

Federal policymakers also embraced this approach under No Child Left Behind, the sweeping 2002 law that named reconstitution as an option for turning around low-performing schools. But the