eduwonkette
Through the lens of social science, eduwonkette took a serious, if sometimes irreverent, look at some of the most contentious education policy debates in this opinion blog. Find eduwonkette’s complete archives prior to Jan. 6, 2008 here. This blog is no longer being updated.
Federal
Opinion
Obama-Biden on the New Report Cards
skoolboy doesn’t fancy himself a particularly political creature, although some readers would likely argue that I’m kidding myself, in that blogging is an inherently political activity. In any event, I haven’t chosen to do a close analysis of the positions or proposed policies of the finalists in our Presidential derby. I’ll make a brief exception today, not to make political hay, but rather to try to illuminate an enduring sociological challenge.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
Lessons for No Child Left Behind from "No Cardiac Surgery Patient Left Behind"
New AYP numbers are out, folks. In California, only 48% of schools made AYP, and only 34% of middle schools did so. In Missouri, only about 40% of schools made AYP. Pick almost any state, and you'll see that there are soaring numbers of schools designated as "in need of improvement." With numbers like these, it's worth considering whether NCLB's measurement apparatus is accurately identifying "failing schools."
Education
Opinion
Grading skoolboy
What bloggers need, Michael Bloomberg prophesied last year, is a "wake-up call." Joel Klein agreed: "If you're not making progress, if your [posts] are not moving forward, then I don't think the [blog] is doing well." Jim Liebman couldn't have agreed more: "“When you say, we’re going to hold you to the best that other [blogs] like you can do, all of a sudden, [there are] no more excuses."
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
Predicting the Near Future*
Sometime soon, with great fanfare, the New York City Department of Education will release this year’s School Progress Reports. (Word on the street is that schools already know their grades.) The School Progress Reports, for better or worse, are the centerpiece of the NYC accountability system. (skoolboy thinks for worse, but more on that later.)
Education
Opinion
COWAbunga! Post-Convention Edition
No, there's no convention commentary here (or else skoolboy would have to shoot himself). This week’s “Comment of the Week Award,” also known as the COWAbunga Award, goes to NYC Educator, for a comment on yesterday’s Coffee Talk question about which big-city school district is the worst-managed. NYC Educator wrote:
School Climate & Safety
Opinion
skoolboy Throws Down the Class Size Gauntlet
Long-time followers of skoolboy (hi, Mom!) know that his first posts on eduwonkette’s blog were about class size. I argued for championing class size reduction as the right thing to do for children and for teachers—an argument grounded in the moral content of public schooling more so than in the technical consequences of class size reduction for standardized test scores.
Education
Opinion
Talk amongst Yourselves
skoolboy was having a spirited discussion with some of his students the other night, who have taught in school systems such as New York City, Detroit, LA, New Orleans, Washington, DC, Newark, Oakland, and elsewhere. The topic of the day: what's the worst-managed big-city school system--and why? Readers, what do you think? Discuss.
Education
Opinion
COWabungle
skoolboy has been worrying about how he was going to make this week's COWabunga award. There haven't been any comments to his posts! Hard to believe that such witty and incisive remarks would draw nary a "well done!" or "you're full of it, skoolboy!" Turns out that the website woes that Ed Week has endured the past few days include a disabling of the comment features here. The good people at Ed Week are now aware of this, and I look forward to hearing what readers have to say when the problem is resolved. It's not the first time that technology has kicked skoolboy in the butt, and I'm sure it won't be the last.
Education
Opinion
The Chicago Boycott: Publicity Stunt or Principled Protest?
Yesterday, State Senator Rev. James Meeks engineered a boycott of the Chicago Public Schools, urging CPS students to travel with him to high-spending districts in Chicago’s suburban North Shore to try to register for school. The objective of the protest was to draw attention to inequalities in school funding in Illinois. Rev. Meeks sought to contrast the Chicago Public Schools, which annually spends a bit over $10,000 per student, with New Trier High School, which spends in the neighborhood of $18,000 per student. Publicity stunt, or principled protest?
Education
Opinion
A Brief Word on Nomenclature
Even though eduwonkette and skoolboy have been unmasked, skoolboy plans to continue to refer to himself in the third person. Why? If I did it at school, my students would laugh me out of the classroom. If I did it at home, my wife would kick my butt. So let me (er, skoolboy) have some fun, OK?
Education
Opinion
Back to (Home) School
It’s back to school! Today, more than one million schoolchildren will get up from the breakfast table, strap on a backpack, and trundle off to … the living room. Home schooling has been expanding rapidly over the course of this decade, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, representing approximately 2.2% of the student population in 2003. (The NCES definition of home schooling is children who are schooled at home instead of in a public or private school for at least part of their education, and whose part-time enrollment in public or private schools does not exceed 25 hours per week.) skoolboy hoped to be able to report some new evidence from the Parent and Family Involvement (PFI) module of the National Household Education Survey’s 2007 sample, but those data have not yet been released. Unfortunately, that means that the best available information is from 2003, the prior wave gathering information on the incidence of home schooling. Moreover, only 239 homeschooled children were included in the PFI module of the 2003 NHES, and thus our knowledge about their characteristics isn’t very precise.
Federal
Opinion
Why the Achievement Gap Matters
skoolboy has explained, much more eloquently than I can, why achievement gaps matter even if the scores of white, African-American, Hispanic, and Asian students are all rising equally:
Education
Opinion
This Week's COWAbunga Award
This week's "Comment of the Week Award" goes to TangoMan for his insightful explanation of why education has followed a different trajectory than medicine in its use of evidence, and what role education schools might play in addressing this problem. I would add that superintendents and administrators are bigger culprits than teachers, who are simply ordered to implement their instructional whims. The full comment is here, and an excerpt highlighting the central themes is below:
Education
Opinion
skoolboy Peeks out of the Closet
Now that eduwonkette has revealed herself as Columbia doctoral student Jennifer Jennings, skoolboy is gingerly sticking his head out of the closet and looking around. (If I see my shadow, I may go back inside for another six weeks.) skoolboy is Aaron Pallas, a Professor of Sociology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. I study inequalities that are created and perpetuated by the ways schools sort and select children and youth, and the role that education plays in individuals’ adult lives. Recently, I went on the record in the New York Sun on a topic near and dear to eduwonkette’s heart: the failure of New York City to make substantial progress in reducing the achievement gap among different racial and ethnic groups.