Sara Mead's Policy Notebook
Sara Mead was a senior associate with Bellwether Education Partners who wrote about education policy, with particular attention to early childhood education, school reform, and improving educational outcomes for low-income students. This blog is no longer being updated.
Early Childhood
Opinion
Families, Kids, Technology, and Education
Interesting new report from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center looks at how families with young children are using and dealing with media. It's a great look at how (and how much) parents use media with their kids, what kinds of technology kids are using and have access to, what parents think about kids and technology, they types of rules and protections they put in place around kids' media use, and parents' concerns. One key issue the report flags is a lack of quality information in the market to help parents gauge the value and quality of the growing proliferation of iphone aps, games, and other media, and their appropriateness and safety for kids of different ages--something anyone who knows a lot of parents with young kids has also seen, and seemingly a big market niche for someone who can really figure this stuff out.
Early Childhood
Opinion
Cut Off!
Big NYT article over the weekend on kindergarten cut-off dates (the age by which children must turn 5 to enter kindergarten). Connecticut (along with New York City) has some of the latest cut-off dates in the country, and is considering moving them up. As my colleague Andy Rotherham notes, this is complicated stuff, and given the difference from other states, in may make sense for Connecticut to do this. But it is worth noting that there's been a trend of states moving up kindergarten cut-off dates over the last few decades, such that, while it was once the norm for kids to start kindergarten at 5 or almost 5, the trend has moved closer to kids starting at 6 or almost 6. And it's worth questioning the rationale there. Basically, the line has gone something like this: "As academic expectations in elementary school increase, kindergarten is starting to look a lot more like first grade used to, and young fives, or kids who aren't 5 yet at the start of the school year, just aren't developmentally ready to handle it, so let's have kids start school later." This may appear superficially to make sense, but it actually doesn't all that much.
Education
Opinion
Stephanie Wilson, Chief of Staff, Aspire Public Schools
Many of the leaders profiled in this series are people who have started their own organizations to address education needs and challenges. But an equally critical challenge is ensuring the next generation of strong leaders working in existing organizations, to sustain these organizations and enable them to grow to scale. As Chief of Staff for Aspire Public Schools, a charter management organization serving more than 10,000 California students, Stephanie Wilson is one of these leaders.
Early Childhood
Opinion
Questions for Mark Zuckerberg on Kids and Social Networking
Last week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg spoke at the New Schools Venture Fund Summit, a major conference for education reformers, funders, and social entrepreneurs. And his comments there suggesting a desire to allow younger children to use Facebook have garnered considerable attention and controversy.
Early Childhood
Opinion
One More Thought on Early Learning Challenge
I should have said this earlier, but, given the outlines of the Early Learning Challenge program announced yesterday, ensuring high-quality evaluation/research for this program is really important. There's a big emphasis right now in the early childhood space on systems-building and coordination. That makes sense: The early childhood sector today is a total mishmash of unaligned programs, providers, funding streams, and policies--and that creates gaps in services, tremendous frustration for parents and providers, and inefficiencies. But--there is very little evidence about the various strategies states are currently using, and early childhood advocates are encouraging, to build systems and improve coordination. We don't actually know which design choices "work" better than others in a practical sense, or are more likely to lead to better results for kids. These are important questions. By instigating changes in state policies in these areas, the Early Learning Challenge can create real opportunities for high-quality research into the impact of different system building approaches and policy design choices on achieving our longer-term goals for the system and the kids and families it serves. Obviously, the evaluation strategies we use to measure the impact of structural reforms is different from the way we measure the impact of specific interventions. But that doesn't mean we can't study their effectiveness and we certainly shouldn't miss the opportunity to do so here.
Education
Opinion
Evan Stone and Sydney Morris, Co-Founders, Educators for Excellence
As young teachers in the New York City Public Schools, Evan Stone and Sydney Morris struggled with a feeling that the policies and practices that affected them and their students were being developed with little teacher input or voice. So they decided to work to change that, by created Educators for Excellence to organize teachers and provide an independent voice for them in public and policy debates over education.
Education Funding
Opinion
Too Soon to Celebrate New Early Learning Challenge Race to Top Funds
Big Race to the Top announcement today from Secretaries Duncan and Sebelius: Of the $700 appropriated by Congress, $500 will be used for a new "Race to the Top--Early Learning Challenge" competition, and $200 will be open for competition among the 9 states that were "Runners Up" in RTT round 2.
Education
Opinion
Mickey Muldoon, Manager of External Affairs, School of One
Mickey Muldoon has a knack for going where the action is: Shortly after graduating from Harvard, he did field organizing in Ohio for the Obama campaign. Last fall he joined School of One just as the initiative to transform schooling through radical personalization was gaining national attention. In between, he spent time at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
Education
Opinion
Major News
This new report from Georgetown University quantifying the earnings of people with different college majors was bound to get a lot of attention. Two quick observations worth noting:
Teaching Profession
Opinion
Jennifer Medbery, Founder, Drop the Chalk
As Jen Medbery notes, data-driven teaching and data-driven reform have become something of a buzz word in education circles over the past several years. But despite the profusion of data points, many teachers lack the time, tools, or skills to use this data effectively. And without those tools or time data can become a burden rather than an asset for teachers.
Education
Opinion
Where is the Next Generation of Education Leaders Coming From?
In making a list of promising young education leaders, it only seemed reasonable to look at their backgrounds, to try to identify trends in where young education leaders are coming from--and where we might look for them to come in the future.
Education
Opinion
Ana Menezes, Partner, the New Teacher Project
The New Teacher Project is known for encouraging the education field to be smarter and more strategic in its use of talent. So it's hardly surprising that TNTP was quick to spot and take full advantage of Ana Menezes' potential as an education leader. Landing in New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina, Menezes, a Teach for America alum, first trained teachers in TNTP's first New Orleans Teaching Fellows Cohort, then moved to managing the entire teachNOLA program (of which the teaching fellows program is one component). Today, as a Partner with TNTP, she manages teaching fellows programs in New Orleans and Philadelphia, a teacher certification pilot program in Denver, and is at the cutting edge of thinking about how to award teacher certification based on demonstrated teacher effectiveness, rather than the traditional coursework and seat time requirements.
Teaching Profession
Opinion
Hailly Korman, Associate, Morrison & Foerster
Earlier this year, a California judge ruled that the Los Angeles' school district's practice of laying off teachers based on seniority--leading to massive layoffs in some of the districts' highest-poverty schools, where novice teachers disproportionately work--violated the rights of students in these schools to equal educational opportunity.
Education
Opinion
Neerav Kingsland, Chief Strategy Officer, New Schools New Orleans
Neerav Kingsland is one of a crop of education reformers who moved to New Orleans to help rebuild and reshape the city's schools after Hurricane Katrina. As a freshly-minted Yale Law grad, Kingsland helped launch New Schools New Orleans, which has been a key force in shaping the transformation of public schooling in New Orleans and in recruiting, supporting, and growing operators of effective schools to serve the city's students. Today, as Chief Strategy Officer, Kingsland operates NSNO on a day-to-day basis, as it embarks on an aggressive effort to transform the lowest-performing quarter of New Orleans schools over the next 5 years.