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Monday, May 10, 2010

Supreme Court Candidate's Pursuit of Education - WSJ.com

Supreme Court Candidate's Pursuit of Education - WSJ.com

A Life Rooted In Pursuit of Education



With her Manhattan upbringing and Ivy League credentials, Elena Kagan personifies the East Coast elite, but she has also shown a popular touch in rising to the top as a law-school administrator and government official.
President Barack Obama is counting on the 50-year-old Ms. Kagan's people skills on a Supreme Court that is often sharply divided between liberal and conservative wings. She is a longtime Democrat, going back to her days working on Michael Dukakis's presidential campaign, but has also built ties with influential conservatives.
As dean of Harvard Law School and solicitor general in the Obama administration, Ms. Kagan endeared herself to students and employees for making little improvements—free coffee and a skating rink for students, better eating quarters for faculty at Harvard and dual computer monitors for assistants in the solicitor general's office.
Ms. Kagan was born in New York City on April 28, 1960. Her father was a lawyer and former chairman of a community board on Manhattan's Upper West Side, while her mother taught for many years at Hunter College Elementary School.
Ms. Kagan attended Hunter College Elementary and graduated in 1977 from the selective Hunter College High School, where her brother, Irving, teaches today. She was known as a top student as early as grade school. "Even though she was a year behind me in [elementary] school she
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Education commissioner Schundler dismisses U.S. test ranking N.J. at the top in reading, math | NJ.com

Education commissioner Schundler dismisses U.S. test ranking N.J. at the top in reading, math | NJ.com

Education commissioner Schundler dismisses U.S. test ranking N.J. at the top in reading, math

By Bob Braun/Star-Ledger Columnist

May 10, 2010, 6:30AM
nj-education-schundler-christie-njea.JPGAmanda Brown/The Star-LedgerNew Jersey education commissioner Bret Schundler, left, with Gov. Chris Christie.
TRENTON -- Good news is always bad news to those who see themselves as "reformers" — no sense reforming what works. So, as state Education Commissioner Bret Schundler begins an effort to change New Jersey schools, he must cope with the bad news of a lot of good news.
Best, or worst, of all are the latest results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, a testing program of the U.S. Department of Education. It shows New Jersey at the top in achievement in reading and math at the fourth- and eighth-grade levels.
While New Jersey’s education officials might be expected to embrace good news, Schundler’s spokesman, Alan Guenther, dismissed the results as "irrelevant.’’
Guenther lumped all of public education together as one "wretched system" that fails students. In an e-mailed response, he wrote:
"The NAEP rankings are irrelevant. We should not take solace in the fact that we score well in a wretched system that fails to adequately teach such a high percentage of children.’’
Not everyone agrees, of course. The assessment program is a widely regarded measure of educational progress and, in the past, critics of New Jersey public schools used a poor showing as the sort of bad news that was good news to reformers.
The usual suspects disagree with the state — the New Jersey Education Association, for example, and David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center. They
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Education - Everything you need to know about the world of education.

Education- Everything you need to know about the world of education.













VALERIE STRAUSS
The Answer Sheet
A School Survival Guide for Parents (And Everyone Else)

Posted at 6:30 AM ET, 05/10/2010

How to get the right college roommate

Graduating high school seniors heading for college will soon get a questionnaire from the school of their choice about housing and roommate preferences. Under no circumstances should they take this form lightly because their freshman year is at stake.
Posted by Valerie Strauss | Permalink | Comments (0)
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JAY MATHEWS
Class Struggle
What's Right and Wrong With Our Schools

Posted at 10:00 PM ET, 05/ 9/2010

Child resisting school? Try a sabbatical for kids.

A kiddie sabbatical is a break to recharge batteries and reassess values. It isn’t the same thing as long-term home-schooling. The strain on parents is short-term. In the Internet age it is often possible to work at home for a few months. I have found no data on this, but we could be seeing a trend toward sabbaticals for the young and restless.
Posted by Jay Mathews | Permalink | Comments (1)
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Ed Buzz: The Nation

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EducationNews.org

EducationNews.org
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What Happened When Kindergarten Went Universal?

5.9.10 - Elizabeth U. Cascio - More than four decades after the first model preschool interventions, there is an
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Texas lawmakers discuss easing public school class size limit to cut costs

5.10.10 - AUSTIN – One of the oldest standards in Texas public schools – the strict limit on the size of elementary classes – could fall victim to...
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Mass. hunting for star teachers

5.10.10 - State education officials plan to announce today an aggressive campaign to recruit hundreds of successful teachers to work in underperforming schools in Boston and eight other troubled school...
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Jay Mathews: Child resisting school? Try a sabbatical for kids.

5.10.10 - A kiddie sabbatical is a break to recharge batteries and reassess values. It isn’t the same thing as long-term home-schooling. The strain on
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Rise & Shine: Charter schools find fans in Assembly, Wall Street | GothamSchools

Rise & Shine: Charter schools find fans in Assembly, Wall Street | GothamSchools

Rise & Shine: Charter schools find fans in Assembly, Wall Street

by Philissa Cramer
  • Hedge-fund executives have emerged as a dominant force in the charter school movement. (Times)
  • Several high-profile Assembly members are supporting the State Senate’s charter school bill. (Post)
  • Two charter school principals say the bill would make charters serve more special-needs students. (Post)
  • At its annual conference, the UFT honored the NAACP for its help stopping school closures. (Post)
  • Budget cuts were the primary focus at the all-day teachers union conference. (NY1)
  • Mayor Bloomberg could adjust his budget to prevent teacher layoffs if he wanted to. (Daily News)
  • The Times says teacher evaluation systems just aren’t good enough yet to do layoffs by quality.
  • The teachers behind Educators 4 Excellence say their school could lose 30 teachers to layoffs. (NY1)
  • The DOE is looking into testing claims against a principal who coached survey answers. (Daily News)
  • The UFT and community groups are seeking funding to fight absenteeism. (GothamSchools, Daily News)
  • One of Bronx Prep Charter’s first students describes how the school helped her get to UVA. (Post)
  • A school for deaf students says sign language means it can’t share space. (Daily News, Chelsea Now)
  • Staten Island’s community superintendent is resigning at the end of the school year. (S.I. Advance)
  • A 9-year-old budding supermodel is also a student in the gifted program at Queens’ PS 150. (Post)
  • Chancellor Klein explained to Israelis where to start in reforming the country’s schools. (Jerusalem Post)
  • The siblings of Obama’s newest Supreme Court nominee, Elana Kagan, teach in city schools. (Times)
  • Claims about how much class sizes will suffer because of budget cuts could be overblown. (Crain’s NY)
  • Michael Mulgrew says he apologized to Joel Klein for calling him “Chancellor Numbnuts.” (Post)
  • In letters, readers weigh in on the teachers union head’s not-so-nice nickname for the chancellor. (Post)
  • Internships and face time with celebrities are hot items in city schools’ auctions. (Wall Street Journal)
  • Across the country, parents are raising more money for schools to make up for budget cuts. (USA Today)
  • A tough budget climate is creating conditions ripe for what feels to many like teacher-bashing. (NPR)
  • Rochester takes an outsider’s view of mayoral control in New York City. (Democrat and Chronicle)
  • This is the first year that there is no Advanced Placement Italian exam. (Wall Street Journal)
  • China is paying to help some of its teachers to take positions in rural American schools. (Times)
  • New Jersey unveiled a proposal to award bonuses to teachers based on student test scores. (Times)
  • For the first time, the state is participating in a national program that rewards top teachers. (Daily News)
  • KIPP founder David Levin takes Sundays off from work, except when he calls former students. (Times)
  • Letter-writers respond to Charles Murray’s op-ed about why charter schools succeed. (Times)
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Schools Matter: Valerie's Answer Sheet

Schools Matter: Valerie's Answer Sheet

Valerie's Answer Sheet

by Kenneth Libby
While Jay Mathews is busy reassuring his readers that his totally useless high school rankings list is safe despite the potential sale of Newsweek, or writing about a DI/Edison school reform attempts (without mentioning even a hint of criticism about either camp), Valerie Strauss is actually reporting on education news of significance. Today, Valerie posted a bit about the Imagine Schools situation in Florida and some of the other ongoing troubles. Jay spilled some ink about Imagine a few years back, but - surprise, surprise - it was a glowing review of Dennis and his crew of cronies, and he even managed to fit in a bit about KIPP. C'mon - don't act like you're surprised. From Valerie's WaPo page:

Charter schools: Is this the way it was supposed to work?


Learning Breaks Out in Britain During Testing Boycott That Affects 300,000 Children

by Jim Horn
Half of the 600,000 10 and 11 year-old children this morning (in Britain) will be reading books, poetry, and telling stories, rather than taking another meaningless standardized test. The boycott will continue through Wednesday. What joy, and what joy if only the prostisuits who run the NEA and the AFT would honor their Code of Ethics against child abuse here in America? From The Independent:
By Richard Garner, Education Editor
As many as 300,000 11-year-olds will find their national curriculum tests cancelled this morning.
The estimate of the amount of disruption caused by a boycott of the tests - in maths and English - 
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Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Behind the charter 'movement': N.Y's hedge funders

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Behind the charter 'movement': N.Y's hedge funders

Behind the charter 'movement': N.Y's hedge funders

by Mike Klonsky
It doesn't get any clearer than this. NYT's Gabriel & Medina lay it all out in "Charter Schools’ New Cheerleaders: Financiers."
Before now, said Boykin Curry, a partner in Eagle Capital Management, who attended the breakfast with Mr. Cuomo, “A lot of hedge fund and finance people in New York had decided state politics was too dirty and focused on their philanthropy.” Mr. Curry added, “I think there’s an awakening now that we can be a force in Albany, but we’ve got to play a tougher game than

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

by Mike Klonsky
This WaPo headline wins this week's It's-Not-From-The-Onion Award.

Hoping to raise school standards, Rhee adds 13 senior managers
Coming in a close second was this statement from BP spokesman Bill Salvin:
The Gulf oil spill containment process is "going exactly as we hoped"

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