Policy & Politics Blog

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 This blog is no longer being updated.

Education Opinion Survivor: The TFA Edition, II
Yesterday, I wrote about Morgaen Donaldson’s research on the survival rates of three cohorts of Teach for America teachers in their initial placement schools and in teaching overall. Today, I’ll describe one of her analyses of why TFA teachers leave their schools, focusing on the complexity of the teaching assignment and the corps member’s academic preparation for the subject(s) that she or he taught.
skoolboy, December 24, 2008
4 min read
Teaching Profession Opinion Survivor: The TFA Edition
skoolboy remains fascinated by the way in which Teach for America, a program serving perhaps 3% of the students in the districts in which it operates, can seem like the tail wagging the dog. Like eduwonkette, I see many virtues to the program, but do not view it as a solution to the nation's challenge of developing a corps of skilled career teachers to serve our children and youth.
skoolboy, December 23, 2008
2 min read
Education Opinion Slow News Day
skoolboy still has nothing substantive to say about Arne Duncan. But he's pleased to note that Duncan's a member of the tribe: his B.A. from Harvard is in sociology. Duncan took a year off from school to write a senior thesis on life in Kenwood, the south side Chicago neighborhood in which his mother Sue had founded an after-school program in 1961. Duncan's 123-page thesis, entitled "The values, aspirations and opportunities of the urban underclass," was read and praised by William Julius Wilson, among the most eminent urban sociologists of our time.
skoolboy, December 22, 2008
1 min read
Accountability Opinion NYC's Trojan Horse
skoolboy has absolutely nothing of substance to say about Education Secretary nominee Arne Duncan, whom he has met exactly once. But he continues to mouth off about New York City's Teacher Data Reports, the NYC Department of Education's version of value-added assessment. Which are not to be used to evaluate teacher performance. But rather for instructional improvement. Excuse me, skoolboy has something in his eye.
skoolboy, December 17, 2008
2 min read
School Choice & Charters Opinion Full Page Ad in the NY Times: $178,633. The Center for Education Reform's Newsblast on DC Charters: Priceless!
This is too precious not to comment on: the Center for Education Reform, the organization that sponsored that full page ad slamming the AFT charter study and the Times in 2004, threw this celebratory paragraph into their newsblast today (see background here):This is a far cry from the fire-breathing condemnation of that ad, isn't it?: "The study in question does not meet current professional research standards. As a result, it tells us nothing about whether charter schools are succeeding."
Eduwonkette, December 16, 2008
1 min read
School Choice & Charters Opinion The Full Page Ad That Won't Be in the Washington Post Tomorrow
Recall the Great Charter School War of 2004: After the NY Times published the results of an AFT report finding that traditional public schools outperformed charters, all hell broke loose. Every charter school advocate and their mother intervened in the name of educational research, arguing that the study was fundamentally flawed and that the Times story was biased against charter schools. Shortly thereafter, charter advocates took out a full page ad in the Times blasting the study and the Times for putting it forward.
Eduwonkette, December 15, 2008
2 min read
Accountability Opinion Don't Think about Elephants
"Don’t think about elephants," skoolboy’s father used to joke, long before George Lakoff’s manifesto with a similar name. The joke, of course, is that by trying not to think about elephants, all that you can think about is elephants. The harder I tried not to think about elephants, the more I thought about them.
skoolboy, December 15, 2008
2 min read
Teaching Profession Opinion EduJello Wrestling, Round 1! Gladwell vs. Gladwell
A thought experiment: If Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers, was to jello wrestle his alter ego on central matters of public education, who would come out on top?
Eduwonkette, December 12, 2008
1 min read
Education Opinion Guest Blogger Hilary Levey: Playing to Win (and for college admissions!) — In First Grade
Hilary Levey is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at Princeton University. Below, she shares findings from her dissertation, "Playing to Win: Childhood, Competition, and the Credentials Bottleneck."
Eduwonkette, December 9, 2008
3 min read
Education Opinion Are Racial Achievement Gaps Closing in Chicago?
I promise that this whole week won't be deadly depressing, but Alexander Russo threw down the gauntlet about the media's lack of attention to results in Chicago Public Schools under Arne Duncan. So I took a look at Chicago's NAEP performance.
Eduwonkette, December 8, 2008
1 min read
School Choice & Charters Opinion What Does It Mean to Be a "Gap Closer?" A Look at Three Boston Charter High Schools
We hear a lot about "gap closing" schools these days, though this term often gets tossed around loosely. Consider Steven Wilson's recent report on "gap closing" Boston charter schools, in which gap closing schools are defined as, "schools that serve students of color from economically disadvantaged families and post achievement levels that rival - and sometimes exceed - suburban school districts."
Eduwonkette, December 8, 2008
1 min read
Education Opinion Early Warning Systems for School Dropouts
The recent flurry of attention to high school completion rates has revived interest in early warning systems designed to identify students at risk of dropping out of high school. The idea behind these early warning systems is that, through the analysis of administrative data, schools and school districts can develop models of risk factors which predict a high probability of dropping out of high school. If the models successfully distinguish probable dropouts from probable graduates, students at high risk of dropping out can be identified, and support resources can be focused on these students identified as at risk of dropout.
skoolboy, December 5, 2008
3 min read
Federal Opinion Bubble, Pony, or Lone Star?: Portraits of the Secretary of Education
A month ago, Flypaper asked us to come up with appropriately silly backdrops for Margaret Spellings' portrait, which will be unveiled on December 18th.
Eduwonkette, December 4, 2008
1 min read
Education Opinion Guest blogger Sean Corcoran on: Private Donations to Public Schools
Sean Corcoran is an economist who teaches at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at NYU.
Eduwonkette, December 2, 2008
3 min read