People were shocked when they heard that a Black mother in Ohio was sentenced to two years in prison for falsely claiming residency to get her kids into a better school.
In Akron, Ohio, Kelly Williams-Bolar has been jailed for falsifying residency records so that her two children could attend a better school in a different
Photo: Getty Images/Brendan Smialowski
Education reform is about to return to the headlines, if not the floor of Congress, if President Obama’s State of the Union is any indication. Obama built his feel-good speech Tuesday night around the uncontroversial theme of “winning the future” and nestled every major policy issue within this rhetorical frame. He put particular emphasis on education as the path to that victorious future. But the education agenda the president articulated contained no surprises. It’s the same one his administration’s been selling for the past two years—and it’s the same one many of his critics have been fretting about for just as long.
Education reform watchers offered Obama reserved praise for giving education such a prominent place in his speech. “One reaction I had was exactly that he spent a lot of time on education, which I think is a good thing,” said John Rogers, associate professor at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. But Rogers, like a handful of other educators I spoke with after the speech, added long caveats after this initial praise.
Obama touted his administration’s undeniable wins, including student aid reform, and championed the more questionable achievements of Race to the Top, which is a $4.35 billion competitive grants program for states that adopt the president’s reform agenda. Eleven states have won millions of dollars each as a reward for opening up their states to more charter schools and agreeing to make test scores a component of teacher evaluations and salaries.
Under Race to the Top, states were rewarded for forcing public schools that were designated as failing to
SpongeBob SquarePants graciously agreed to be interviewed about education, though, for the sake of transparency, I will say that our questions (developed with the assistance of my daughters) were put to him by Bikini Bottom news anchor Perch Perkins. There is no reason to believe that SpongeBob agreed to this one-of-a-kind interview because his network, Nickelodeon, is premiering the “Legends of Bikini Bottom” special, coincidentally, today, on Facebook and Friday/Saturday on television. We believe that SpongeBob just loves
Let’s do something small, but immediate.
We are defending seniority. We are teachers, and are people.
Using the phrase “Last in – First out” is wrong in two ways.
On Tuesday, there were NYC Council hearings on the closing schools, featuring lots of heated discussion. The hearings were officially to consider two bills: one that would require DOE to report on student discharge rates at all schools, in which thousands of students leave the system each year and are never counted as dropouts. Jennifer Jennings and I wrote a paper about the rising discharge rates between 2000 and 2007, pointing out that over this period the rate and number of discharged students in NYC increased, and how this was a huge loophole that allowed schools to artificially inflate their graduation rates. The ninth grade discharge rate actually doubled over this period.
Another proposed bill would report on the fate of students at closing schools. One of the biggest tragedies is that among the students in a “phase out” school, only first time 9th graders who have accumulated sufficient credits are allowed to transfer to other regular high schools; other students who are not able to graduate over this period are fated to dropout, be discharged to GED programs, or take substandard credit recovery programs, with their chance at a meaningful high school diploma ended as well.Here is my testimony in support of both bills.
At the hearings, Jennifer Bell-Elwanger expressed DOE’s opposition to these bills, claiming that as written they violate student privacy,
President Obama's State of the Union address was a direct challenge to lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle to work together toward a more prosperous and globally competitive America. The president called for investments in innovation, education, and infrastructure to jump-start economic growth. He also pledged to get the nation's fiscal house in order and reshape federal government in ways that make it leaner and more efficient. His speech touched on many subjects and policy issues of great concern to all Americans and especially the nation's Hispanics.
Immigration
The president rightfully acknowledged the contributions of immigrants historically in making America strong and competitive globally. In addition, he recognized that restoring America's leading role in the world also means keeping talented and skilled immigrant students in the
So, yesterday I tried to articulate what I think might be a new story to tell around education, one that acknowledges that schools will soon no longer be seen as the only path to learning though they can and should still play a crucial role in our children’s learning lives despite the “unbundling” of what schools have pretty much held a monopoly on for 125 years. Obviously, it’s a story that has yet to gain any traction in terms of the national or local conversations going on about schools. Everyone is yelling and screaming about doing what we currently do better, not fundamentally changing what we do. Current “reformists” don’t want real change because it would upset the business of schools in some fundamental ways. And those like Jeb Bush who are now engaging in reform talk around access to technology no doubt are driven by the $$$ that many businesses are seeing right
