Secretary Arne Duncan talks about the importance of early childhood education, and he calls on parents and citizens to get involved and “be part of the solution” in this January 7, 2011, video.
Click here for an accessible version of the video.
On December 7, Naomi Wolf posted an op-ed at the Huffington Post entitled “Julian Assange Captured By World’s Dating Police.” In it, she declared as fact that Assange stood “accused of having consensual sex with two women,” and that “both alleged victims are … upset that he began dating a second woman while still being in a relationship with the first.”
Wolf’s ostensible source for these claims was an article in Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper. That article, however, made it clear that its characterization of the accusers’ motives was only surmise:
“How must Sarah have felt to discover that the man she’d taken to her bed three days before had already taken up with another woman? Furious? Jealous? Out for revenge? Perhaps she merely felt aggrieved for a
We often see pundits arguing that education spending has doubled over a 30 year period, when adjusted for inflation, and we’ve gotten nothing for it. We’ve got modest growth in NAEP scores and huge growth in spending. And those international comparisons… wow!
The assertion is therefore that our public education system is less cost-effective now than it was 30 years ago. But this assumption is based on layers of flawed reasoning, on both sides of the equation.
Here’s a bit of School Finance 101 on this topic:
First, what are the two sides of the equation, or at least the two parts of the fraction? The numerator here is education spending and how we measure it now compared to previously. The major flaw in the usual reasoning is
If you’re running a school district or a private school and you are deciding on what to keep in your budget and what to discard, you are making trade-offs. You are making trade-offs as to whether you want to spend money on X or on Y, or perhaps a more complicated mix of many options. How you come to your decision depends on a number of factors:
Remember what we said a few months ago about including the word "education" and even "ESEA" in your 2011 State of the Union drinking game? Well, if you take that advice, you may want to make sure you have at least a six-pack handy.
Rumor has it that the president is going to make a big push for renewing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in his address to the newly divided Congress, slated for Jan. 25.
U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, the chairman of the Senate, Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, is aiming for the panel to consider a bill by Easter, and then bring the measure to the floor in late spring or early summer, according to Justine Sessions, a spokeswoman for the committee.
Can the bill actually get done this year, before the 2012 presidential election campaign complicates matters? The current version of the ESEA law, the No Child Left Behind Act, was up for renewal four years ago, and so far
Ed Week is hosting an online "chat," in which a pair of experts on school budgets and finance will be answering your questions at 2 p.m. today about districts' struggles during the aftermath of "the Great Recession."
Our guests are Noelle Ellerson, of the American Association of School Administrators, who can offer an on-the-ground perspective on what schools are going through, and Donald J. Boyd, of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, who can speak to some of the big-picture economic forces at work. The discussion focuses on some of the topics put forward in Ed Week's newly released edition of Quality Counts, which focuses on the financial crisis.
We're accepting questions. So go to this link, and submit yours!
The reform bill that was making waves last month is dead, for now at least, but so is the extra funding for education. So who won? Illinois Legislators Approve 66% Tax Increase CNC: With only hours left before new state lawmakers were to take over, Illinois's State Legislature narrowly approved a vast tax increase early on Wednesday... Smokers won't fund schools State School News Service: Districts and other LEAs should receive most FY 2011 appropriated funds by the end of the fiscal year, a great improvement over FY 2010, and they should not fall off a cliff due to the loss of federal funds in FY 2012. In FY 2012, beginning July 1, education funding should not much exceed FY 2011 funding. Any increase in state support would likely
[Remarks to Students after a moment of silence, 1.12.11]
On Saturday, our hometown Tucson was struck hard by an individual acting without conscience, without rationality, and possibly without sanity. This terrible strike hit us at our community’s most sensitive place: not only did it harm and kill many fine, fine people, it hit us in the heart of our body politic.
Since the ancient Athenians conceived of and built the polis, a democratic state composed of citizens governing themselves in the open air by way of free and spirited discourse and debate, this idea of the body politic has been our civilization’s ideal, our shining city on a hill.
Saturday morning, in front of a Tucson Safeway at which many of us shop regularly, an elected official and her staff came to talk in the open air with Tucson citizens, acting out our nation’s and our civilization’s ideals. In a
This space explores issues in public education policy, and it advocates for a commitment to and a re-examination of the democratic purposes of schools. If there is some urgency in the message, it is due to the current reform efforts that are based on a radical re-invention of education, now spearheaded by a psychometric blitzkrieg of "metastasizing testing" aimed at dismantling a public education system that took almost 200 years to build.
It looks like clout hasn't just permeated the walls of City Hall. It's spread to Chicago's public schools, specifically its fanciest and hardest-to-get-in-to selective enrollment high schools.
These top nine high schools in the city of Chicago use a strict score system to admit students based on their grades, attendance, state standardized test scores and school admissions tests. The system is brutal - parents regularly complain about the circus-style hoops their kids have to jump through just to get into a good school. But the system has a back door - principal discretion picks. It's supposed to be used for kids who can argue why they didn't get a higher score - maybe they're not so good on standardized tests - but deserve to go to their
Brian Jones has asked us to pause during the 2011 MLK Day to consider King’s reaction to the achievement gap that persists well into the twenty-first century, suggesting that education policy begun under George W. Bush—No Child Left Behind (NCLB)—and accelerated under Barack Obama works against King’s dream.
As Jones mentions, political leaders are apt to quote King selectively, focusing on King’s words that serve their political and ideological purposes—Republican and Democrats alike. I agree with Jones, and suggest we spend more time and energy on the challenges from King in 1967 that Jones recommends.
I also recommend that we place King’s messages in the context of today’s public claims coming from the new reformers, including
"Education 'reforms' with high fiscal impact were enacted last spring to bolster the state's application for a federal RTTT grant. The grant didn't happen, and the ciagrette tax aimed at generating $375 million to pay for the new programs also failed. But the reforms remain to compete
As schools chief in Prince George's County, Deasy hooked up with Jon Schnur of New Leaders for New Schools, who insists that if you can lead an Army unit in Iraq, you can turn around a failing school in a large urban district.
In an ugly 2007 Associated Press story about school restructuring under NCLB, Deasy's position was quoted about Arrowhead Elementary in Prince George's County:
Superintendent Deasy acknowledges the atmosphere at Arrowhead is more intense than at schools that aren't facing restructuring. He
