This Week In Education
Written by former Senate education staffer and journalist Alexander Russo, This Week in Education was an opinion blog that covered education news, policymakers, and trends with a distinctly political edge. (For archives prior to January 2007, please click here. For posts after November 2007, please click here.) This blog is no longer being updated.
Federal
Opinion
Editorial Responses Criticize Miller Draft
It might not make much of a difference to Congressman Miller's political calculations, but today's slew of editorial responses to the discussion draft skew against him:
Federal
Opinion
Handy-Dandy NCLB Reauthorization Resources
Feeling a little bit overwhelmed and bored over all this NCLB reauthorization action (already)? Me too. Plus which, I'm too lazy to read everything. So here are some handy-dandy resources to consider, with thanks for all the hard work you've done:
Education
Opinion
Magazines Lag Behind Papers On Web, Despite Increased Use Of Blogs
Check out this report comparing newspapers and magazines on various features of web capabilities. You might think that magazines -- more entertaining, creative, and all than newspapers -- were more blog-savvy, but they lag behind newspapers still. The good news? More and more are creating blogs to feed their readers' voracious appetites for new content.
School Climate & Safety
Opinion
Mr. Successful: "This American Life" Does Foster Care
"Anyone who's ever been to a wedding knows not everybody can stand up in front of a roomful of people and just talk. Anthony Pico (left) discovered by accident, at 15, that he has a gift for doing that. He's 18 now, and he's become so well known as a public speaker on the subject of foster care, which he knows well, he was appointed to a blue ribbon commission aiming to reform the largest foster care system in the country. But it's gotten complicated...," begins this segment from a recent episode of This American Life (
Federal
Opinion
Spellings Letter; Teacher Quality Draft Later Today
Thanks to the Ed Trust, here's a PDF of the Spellings letter to Miller that she promised yesterday, listing problems she and others have with the M&M discussion draft. Speaking of which, Miller said that Title II and the rest would be posted sometime today, which will help us see whether the teacher quality elements of NCLB are going to be strengthened or -- is such a thing possible? -- weakened. (There's a nod to teacher quality in the form of an attempt to close the equitability loophole in Miller's Title I proposal, according to EdWeek's David Hoff, but if they couldn't do that in 2001 they don't seem likely to take care of it now.)
Education
Opinion
Spellings Urged Early Rumsfeld Firing, Book Says
Way back at the beginning of 2006, EdSec Spellings was apparently called into the Oval Office to give counsel on what to do about former Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld -- and she recommended his termination, according to this book excerpt sent in by a friend. Who knew? Not that it made much difference. He resigned the day after the November elections. But at least we know she voted the right way.
Education
Opinion
Weighing Miller's NCLB Proposal
Three different takes on how Cong. Miller's proposal is going over. Compare and contrast:
Federal
Opinion
New NCLB Bill "Isn't Wonkery," Says Chairman Miller; Criticisms Are "Hokum"
The public mud-slinging between Spellings and Miller is really heating up. Makes you wonder what they say about each other behind closed doors. And, substantively, it bodes poorly for a strengthening of the current NCLB law.
Federal
Opinion
Spellings Calls NCLB Goals "Righteous"; Miller Schedules Own Conference Call
During an early afternoon press conference call, EdSec Spellings reiterated her concerns about the M&M (Miller and McKeon) discussion draft and said she was sending them comments in the hopes that they were still open-minded. She called the current NCLB and its 2014 goals "righteous, proper, and do-able." Some of the differences between the two positions seem relatively minor -- what form differentiated interventions should take, for example. Others -- multiple measures and other changes to AYP seem more problematic to Spellings.
Teaching Profession
Opinion
NCLB, Like Shanker, Stronger On Standards Than Teacher Quality
I'm still dipping around in Rick Kahlenberg's new bio of Al Shanker (pictured), but this commentary about Shanker and NCLB (What Would Al Say?) reminds me of one clear Kahlenberg theme: Shanker was much more effective in pushing for standards and accountability than he was on teacher quality issues. In that sense, NCLB is very much an Al Shanker type of law: stronger on standards and accountability than on teacher quality. Alas, the teacher quality issue may be as or more important than anything else. But there's precious little discussion about TQ in NCLB 2.0. What's with that?
Education
Opinion
Individual School Profiles & Discussions Coming To Newspaper Websites
Eventually I think that most major newspaper websites will have profiles of individual school and space for ongoing discussions among parents and teachers. Some papers are already doing a version of this by partnering with GreatSchools. But for now, at least, the most progress in this area seems to be high school sports pages. For example, the OrlandoSentinel has a high school sports zone with customized sports pages and ways for parents to track individual athletes, along with user-generated content. Via CyberJournalist.com.
Teaching Profession
Opinion
Rounding Up The Education Titles
Former US News education editor Ben Wildavsky reviews the latest group of education books so you don't have to. He finds some things to like about Linda Perlstein's Tested, though he questions whether the school she profiles is representative. "Could it be that the problem is not the tests but the inappropriate, even absurd, ways in which schools are responding to them?" About Jonathan Kozol's Letters To A Young Teacher, Wildavsky doesn't have much good to say. Also reviewed: Dan Brown's story of a first-year teacher in New York, as well as Alex Klein's profile of kids at Stuyvesant High School.