Look around to your favorite reformy blogs and see if any of them are talking about Chicago's TIF program. Probably not. It's the teacher pay pilot no one wants to talk about -- now that it's showing little or no impact. Reformers don't want to talk about it because, well, they like to pretend that all their ideas are brilliant and inevitably effective. Accountability and reflection that's for the little people. Media types don't want to talk about it because, well, they touted the
It seems that whenever I go somewhere to give a presentation about teaching with technology, there is someone in the audience who will say something to the effect of "this is great, but all of those sites are blocked in my school." This then leads to conversation about strategies for convincing administrators to relax strict filtering policies. One of the places I usually direct people to in those conversations is Unmasking the Digital Truth created byWes Fryer. Yesterday, I had an experience that led me to drafting an activity that could possibly help critics of open access to the web to understand how valuable the web can be in education.
by Frederick M. Hess • Jun 2, 2010 at 10:48 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
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I know and like the National School Boards Association. The NSBA's executive director, Anne Bryant, is a good friend who has my respect and admiration. I've had a good, longstanding partnership with the NSBA on various projects and have been an occasional contributor to their terrific American School Board Journal. All of this left me puzzled and disheartened when I read the NSBA's troubling and tone-deaf recommendationsregarding the treatment of charter schools in a reauthorized NCLB (or ESEA, for those eager to whitewash the now unpopular law).
The NSBA's five recommendations:
• "Require federally funded Charter Schools to abide by the same educational accountability requirements, and federal environmental, labor, and due process laws that traditional public
Former SRC commissioner to head academics in Milwaukee The Notebook blog
. . . .From an article in The Irish Times (January 2010) about GĆ¼len schools in Ethiopia which quotes Hakan Yavuz, a Turkish professor who co-edited a book on the Gulen phenomenon and describes the movement as the "most powerful force in Turkey." He says its main goal has been the "Islamisation" of Turkish society:
Yavuz argues that there is a wider agenda as manifested by its increasingly global
Politico's list of stories that could affect the November elections doesn't specifically mention unemployed teachers, but near-double digit unemployment figures are on the list and let's be honest it wouldn't be a good thing for Obama et al if there were lots of teachers unemployed next fall, especially considering their inability / unwillingness to point the finger back at the previous administration for much of the mess we're in. I continue to hold that such a thing as massive teacher layoffs is not particularly likely, and certainly won't be out of proportion to unemployment in other sectors. The question is whether teachers can accept even relatively small layoff numbers without freaking out all over the Democrats in November. Over the years some of them seem to have gotten the notion that they are somehow protected from things like enrollment fluctuations and 
Thirty-Five States, D.C. Vie for Education Funding WSJ Stephanie Banchero: Federal officials expect to name finalists on or around July 26, with winners to be announced by the end of September. They said 10-15 states could win grants...California applies again for federal school-reform grant LA Times: California joined 34 other states Tuesday in competing a second time for federal Race to the Top school-reform grants, but union opposition could doom the effort... Experts: Texas textbooks are unlikely to spread AP: Technology has made it easier and more affordable for publishers to tailor textbooks to different standards. That's especially true in the 20 other states like Texas where education boards approve textbooks for statewide use... Can 120 new teachers lift six failing Louisville schools? When the new year begins this fall at Valley Traditional High School, there will be five new English teachers, three new math teachers and two new science teachers, as well as new special education, choral and art instructors. Via EWA...More below.
California’s state Senate wants no part of Texas’ new standards for history textbooks. Responding to changes adopted by Texas State Board of Education, the California Senate adopted legislation intended to prevent conservative revisions to American history from becoming part of the Golden State’s public-school curriculum.
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010
The Christie administration's application for as much as much as $400 million in federal funds for education reform does not include a provision the teachers union agreed on last week.
The New Jersey Education Association as well as the State Education Commissioner Bret Schundler had agreed that seniority would continue to be used to decide on teacher layoffs.
But Governor Christie says he rejected that in submitting the state's application for federal money in the "Race to the Top" program.
“I believe merit pay has to go to individual teachers,” says Christie. “I believe that if there are going to be layoffs that those layoffs should be done based upon merit, not based upon seniority.”
Christie says he believes his changes will not hurt the state's chances of
