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 This blog is no longer being updated.
Education Funding
Opinion
Pre-SOTU Blast from the Past
Tuesday's State of the Union address has launched a fun game in D.C. education policy and media circles. It goes like this: some folks are reporting breathlessly that the President is going to make education a key theme of the speech, launching a big push to reauthorize ESEA. Then others respond: "that's all well and good, but really, nothing's gonna come of it." Really, it's a very fun game, at least by the standards of what passes for fun in D.C. these days ;)
Education
Opinion
MLK Day and Education Reform
Today is Martin Luther King Day, a holiday that always makes me a little bit uncomfortable. Not because I have anything but the utmost respect for King and work challenging racial and economic injustice. But because I respect him too much to be comfortable with much of how we "honor" his legacy this day.
School Choice & Charters
Opinion
Pulling Rank
Two very different sets of state rankings are out this week. The big one is Ed Week's (do I really need to disclose that they're hosting my blog?) annual Quality Counts report, which includes the usual state-by-state highlights and rankings, as well as special reports honing in on how the education impacts of state budget crunches. Rick Hess should be especially pleased that one of these stories looks at the need to and challenges of reigning in growth in personnel costs, and another looks at achieving efficiencies in special education. There's also good news around increased coordination and better transitions between early childhood and the K-12 public school system, although the indicators here remain blunt.
Education
Opinion
Oh, Mama!
Judging from my RSS and twitter feeds today, everyone can't stop talking about Amy Chua's WSJ essay this weekend on "Chinese mothers"--and it's a doozy of the genre, ripe with anecdotes and thin on data, primarily fixated on the concerns and experience of educated professionals, and seemingly designed to prey on parental guilt and feelings of inadequacy (which, give Chua credit, is at least consistent with the broader theme of the piece).
Teaching Profession
Opinion
An Idea with Merit?
Tom Vander Ark's recent post about the idea of using "merit badges" to create a more customized educational experience is well-worth checking out. Vander Ark is focusing on K-12 education, but the needs in higher education seem even greater, given the diversity of needs and skill levels with which people come to the higher ed system. Conversations about increasing postsecondary attainment to restore and maintain our global lead here ought to acknowledge that this probably can't be done just by pushing more people through an existing system that has a really crappy track record serving low-income, minority, and non-traditional students. We need new and more diverse forms here that are customized to students' pre-existing skill levels and needs, indicate real skills, are respected by employers, and translate into meaningful employment and advancement opportunities. I've been thinking about this a lot lately in the context of the ongoing debate about increasing education and skill levels of early childhood educators--stay tuned for more on that.
Early Childhood
Opinion
In Case You Were Wondering What Some of the First 420 Signs Were...
The Post's Conor Williams has a good piece looking in further detail at the school reform situation in D.C. and why the election of Vincent Gray as Mayor is not the catastrophe for D.C. ed reform many national voices assumed it was. Williams particularly highlights Gray's selection of Hosanna Mahaley as State Superintendent (the person who runs the office that carries out state-level education functions for D.C.), a role some folks expect to become more important under Gray and given D.C.'s Race to the Top win; DeShawn Wright as Deputy Mayor for Education; and decision to keep former Chancellor Rhee's deputy, Kaya Henderson, on as interim chancellor.
Education
Opinion
Reason 421 Why Fenty's Loss and Rhee's Departure Don't Mean School Reform is Dead in D.C.
Last night the D.C. Democratic State Committee selected Sekou Biddle as interim At-Large Council Member, filling the vacancy created by former At-Large Member Kwame Brown's election as Council Chair in November. Biddle will fill the seat until an April special election, which folks who know D.C. politics better than I say he now has a good shot at winning. Brown has already endorsed Biddle for the seat, and Mayor Vincent Gray has kinda-sorta-indicated support without actually giving an endorsement. (If you, like me, find this process utterly confusing and ugly, blame D.C.'s Congressional overlords for the goofy home rule arrangements they've created.)
Early Childhood
Opinion
Building a Pre-K System
I've spent this week on the blog arguing that we should regard publicly funded pre-k as a structural arrangement, rather than a specific instructional intervention. This has implications for how we think about pre-k research, but it also has broader implications for how policy debates address pre-k.
Education Funding
Opinion
Think You Can Ignore Early Ed in 2011? Better Think Twice!
So the CW in Washington these days is that early ed issues are "out" (in the words of eduflack Patrick Riccards) and that, with early ed advocates having lost key battles in 2010, and the incoming Tea Party Congress no fan of guv'mint-funded early childhood programs, nobody should expect much action on early ed in 2011.
School Choice & Charters
Opinion
How Pre-k is Like Charter Schools, and What We Can Learn from the Evidence on Each
Yesterday, I explained that I don't think it makes sense to think and talk about the evidence on pre-k in the same way that we think and talk about the evidence on specific instructional and pedagogical innovations.
Curriculum
Opinion
New Successes for Success for All?
Readers interested in either the i3 grant program or in literacy instruction should check out Nick Anderson's Washington Post article from the weekend on Success for All, as well as this excellent and interesting follow-up blog post that reminds me why I so like Jay Mathews. I think that the awarding of major i3 "scale-up" grants to two long-running literacy interventions--Success for All and Reading Recovery--that had previously been largely shut out of the federal Reading First program remains one of the most interesting and overlooked stories of 2010. (overlooked largely, I'd guess, because too few folks in the education media or reform crowds are really all that interested in instruction, and those who are, are sick of the "reading wars."--but Anderson's and Mathews' articles offer good steps to address that oversight) The real outcome of this story and the i3 grants generally is of course only just starting to be seen, so saavy ed-watchers should stay tuned to this story in 2011.
Early Childhood
Opinion
Is Pre-k a Specific Intervention, or a Structural Reform?
As I wrote yesterday, whether we think about preschool as a specific intervention or a structural arrangement has significant implications for how we think and talk about pre-k research--as well as pre-kindergarten more generally.
Early Childhood
Opinion
"If it is a Miracle, any sort of evidence will answer, but if it is a Fact, proof is necessary"
Recent blog posts on pre-kindergarten by Kevin Carey and myself have generated some questions and comment from individuals who believe Kevin and I are challenging or attempting to dismiss the evidence on the effectiveness of pre-kindergarten programs. Not at all--the body of evidence demonstrating that children can benefit from high-quality pre-kindergarten programs is one of the most robust in education policy.
Education
Opinion
Where are the Cool YA and Chick Lit Teachers?
Alexander Russo asks: "Where are the Best Novels About Education?" and gets some pretty solid answers. I'm surprised, though, that no one mentioned youth classics like These Happy Golden Years, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of Windy Poplars, or Jo's Boys. To be sure, these books are for teenage girls, rather than adults. And they are about education in a very different era (teacher contracts no longer include requirements to haul water or stoke the stove). But the trials, tribulations and occasional triumphs of working as a teacher are central to these books, and some of the heroines' frustrations (fortunately not all of them!) would ring familiar to many first-year teachers today.