Monday, March 8, 2010

Education Week American Education News Site of Record

Final Rules Unveiled for 'i3' Innovation Fund

The Education Department is still requiring a private-sector match and tough evidence for the $650 million in competitive stimulus grants.

• U.S. Ed-Tech Plan Prods K-12 to Innovate

(March 8, 2010)

Ed. Officials to Step Up Civil Rights Enforcement

The federal government plans to give a deeper look at issues ranging from programs for english language learners to access to college preparatory courses.

• Why Boys Fail: How Will Duncan Define Civil Rights?
• Politics K-12: Arne Duncan Set to Pledge Renewed Focus on Civil Rights

(March 8, 2010, AP)

Race to Top Enters Home Stretch With 16 Finalists

When officials come to Washington to make their pitches for part of $4 billion in grants, most can expect to go home empty-handed.

• Blog: Rick Hess Straight Up: What the RTT Finalists Heard
• Complete coverage: Schools and the Stimulus

(March 5, 2010) | Comments (3)

The Quick and the Ed We interrupt this gnashing of teeth . . .

The Quick and the Ed

We interrupt this gnashing of teeth . . .

with a little reality check.

Since the 16 finalists for Race to the Top funding were announced last Thursday, there has been a general gnashing of teeth and rending of garments.

“A sad day for reformville,” Petrelli writes. Today’s WaPo says the list isn’t “exclusive” enough.

I think that Secretary Duncan did just what you’d expect a college ballplayer to do: he kept his eye on the ball. And the ball, in this case is encouraging politicians at the state and local level to make changes.

Politicians, like entrepreneurs, aren’t risk takers. For them to get involved with a reform effort–especially one that takes on entrenched interests–there has to be a pretty clear sign that there could be a prize in the bottom of the Cracker Jack box.

The Department’s math–about one-third of the applicants made it into the Sweet Sixteen–seems about right to someone who spent nearly two decades as a policymaker on the state and local level.

To use another basketball metaphor (hey, it’s March), the Department is using the clock. All 16 won’t get funded, of course. But now, while state legislatures are still meeting, is the time to push legislators to act.

RTT4HE

Getting ESEA reauthorized is going to be a tough slog in the best of times, and these times are definitely not those. So it seems increasingly likely that Race to the Top will remain the center of the Obama administration’s education agenda. And not just the RTT program but the larger theory behind it: instead of doling out federal money via automatic formula, leverage change by focusing resources only on states that enact meaningful reform.

So I think it’s only a matter of time before RTT gets franchised out to other policy areas. The first should be higher education, where the administration is on the verge of investing billions of new dollars but still lacks a sharp state-level policy agenda to ensure that those resources make a difference. For a complete rundown of what the Race to the Top for Higher Education (henceforth: RTT4HE) should look like, see my new column in

"The New Dork": Geek Anthem Spoofs Jay-Z (VIDEO)

"The New Dork": Geek Anthem Spoofs Jay-Z (VIDEO)
Let's hear it for the new dorks. It wasn't too long ago that being a dork meant you weren't cool. Oh how times have changed. A new generation of geeky entrepreneurs are setting the standards for business and the world we live in -- they are the trendsetters. So it's only fitting that they're celebrated with a internet video that parodies Jay-Z's "Empire State Of Mind." They've outcooled Jay-Z, who by all account is very cool.

Student Activists Beaten After Rally On Interstate (VIDEO, PHOTOS)

Produced by HuffPost's Eyes & Ears Citizen Journalism Unit

On March 4th, 2010, demonstrators in California and across the country took to the streets to protest massive cuts at all levels of education and government imposed austerity measures.

In Oakland, thousands of protesters rallied in Frank Ogawa Plaza. A group of some 200 then broke off and marched through downtown before moving to Interstate 880 and later taking over an Interstate 980 exit ramp. The Oakland riot police swept in and without a call for dispersal started swinging batons and beating people before arresting them. The video below shows the beatings 1 minute 47 seconds in.

As police were attacking the crowd, Francois Zimany, a fifteen-year old high school student, fractured his skull after a 30 foot fall off the freeway. Questions have arisen over whether he fell, jumped, or was pushed by police off of the freeway.

The interstate was shut for over two hours with traffic gridlocked across the Bay Area. Corporate journalists covering the action were allowed to leave while the independents were rounded up along with demonstrators, including one student journalist with the Daily Californian who was not carrying press credentials.

Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism dean responded to the arrest in an interview with the Daily Californian:

Neil Henry, dean of UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, noted that these days "everybody has a camera and has access to publication on the Internet."

"In general, student journalists should be treated with the same respect as journalists from traditional media," he said. "They do same thing, they report under high standards to a significant

Fixing schools by firing teachers - Education - Salon.com

Fixing schools by firing teachers

Slash-and-burn tactics come to education. But in our race to repair broken schools, are we hurting kids?

BY MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS

Salon/iStockphoto

Central Falls High School in Rhode Island is one of the lowest-performing schools in one of the poorest communities in the state. It has a graduation rate of 48 percent. Only 7 percent of its students, the majority of whom are English language learners, are at grade-level proficiency in math.

Recently the district issued an edict to its teachers: longer hours and extra training, without what their union felt was adequate compensation. When negotiations broke down, the school board fired the entire staff -- 93 people including the principal, teaching assistants and 77 teachers. As things stand now, they will finish out the year, pack up their slide rules and chalk, and get out.

In Boston, meanwhile, mere hours after the state named 12 "underperforming" schools, superintendent Carol Johnson announced that the city will fire five principals and require the entire staffs at six schools to reapply for their jobs.

As part of Barack Obama's pledge to dramatically overhaul the American education system, schools across the country have been scrambling to turn around test scores and to dash for cash as part of a"Race to the Top" incentive program. Those that don't can find themselves in similar straits as those New England: facing full-scale firings or outright closure.

Speaking Monday on his promise to invest $900 million in turning around the school system, the president laid out a variety of tough-talking strategies for failing schools, "like replacing a school's principal

Amazon.com: The Death and Life of the Great American School System eBook: Diane Ravitch: Kindle Store

The Death and Life of the Great American School System (Kindle Edition)

by Diane Ravitch (Author)

4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

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37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book of warning and wisdom, February 17, 2010

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This review is from: The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Hardcover)

This is a wonderful book. With precision and soul, Diane Ravitch shows why our present-day education reforms are likely to do more harm than good: they are based on ideas extraneous to education and too often ignore its content. Closure, breakup, privatization of schools, rigid pedagogical models, teacher evaluations based on test scores--none of these reforms addresses why and what we are teaching in the first place. No Child Left Behind gave us accountability without substance; worse, it gave us "a timetable for the demolition of public education in the United States." Charter schools in themselves are no solution; they vary widely in quality and as a whole have not outperformed public schools. Small schools are no solution; they may lack many of the resources of larger schools, and some small-school initiatives have proven disastrous.

In chapter 1, Ravitch writes, "School reformers sometimes resemble the characters in Dr. Seuss's Solla Sollew, who are always searching for that mythical land `where they never have troubles, at least very few.' Or like Dumbo, they are convinced they could fly if only they had a magic feather. In my writings, I have consistently warned that, in education, there are no shortcuts, no utopias, and no silver bullets. For certain, there are no magic feathers that enable elephants to fly."

Through fascinating analyses, narratives, interviews, and descriptions, Ravitch shows how our education reformers miss the mark again and again. But the book is far from despondent. There is much we can do, Ravitch argues, if we honor the substance of education and give our schools the support they need. This book should long outlast the reforms criticized in its pages. Its prose and principles stand strong against the times.

Latest News and Comment from Education

Monday, March 8, 2010

Education Week American Education News Site of Record

The Quick and the Ed We interrupt this gnashing of teeth . . .

We interrupt this gnashing of teeth . . .

RTT4HE

"The New Dork": Geek Anthem Spoofs Jay-Z (VIDEO)

Student Activists Beaten After Rally On Interstate (VIDEO, PHOTOS)

Student Activists Beaten After Rally On Interstate (VIDEO, PHOTOS)

Fixing schools by firing teachers - Education - Salon.com

Fixing schools by firing teachers

Slash-and-burn tactics come to education. But in our race to repair broken schools, are we hurting kids?

Amazon.com: The Death and Life of the Great American School System eBook: Diane Ravitch: Kindle Store

The Death and Life of the Great American School System (Kindle Edition)

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