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 This blog is no longer being updated.
Education Funding
Opinion
King Of Smug
Eduwonk tries to make light of being called smug (and intentionally bewildering) in a recent letter to the Washington Post (The Reviews Are In!). But the description isn't that far off. Ever more, Eduwonk's never wrong, never unsure, never not in the know. All that from a meager year spent turning off the lights at the end of the Clinton administration.
Education Funding
Opinion
School Reform Outsider Hired To Run DC Schools
What to make of today's announcement that Michelle Rhee, until now honcho of The New Teacher Project, has been appointed to run the DC public school system? It's an interesting choice, to say the least -- exciting, a little bit nervous-making. Rhee is a standout, there's no doubt, and has accomplishments coming out of her ears. And she exemplifies the outside-in move that I've been whining about these past few months -- a nonprofit mover and shaker moving into the system and building her own experience (and hopefully improving the district), rather than continuing to work from outside. Previous posts:
Federal
Opinion
Whirlwind Whitmire Takes Campaign '08 By Storm
USA Today's Richard Whitmire is all over the place these days, from a letter in the Times decrying the lack of education attention in the 2008 campaign to a recent announcement that EWA (the ed writers association) is ramping up the pressure. Current EWA board president, Whitmire says that EWA has got one of the top candidates to agree to a one on one sitdown on education topics. Maybe they'll be crazy enough to let me sit on the panel and tear into the candidates like you know I like to do. In the meantime, why isn't Ed In '08 involved, I wonder? Organizations are so strange.
Education
Opinion
EdWeek Slams KIPP, Issues Report, Gives It All Away
Style and hype aside, the big slam on KIPP schools has been that it can't keep its students -- they drop out or return to their old schools where things are easier and less structured, a dynamic that at a certain point sort of defeats the purpose. EdWeek takes a look at this in a recent article: KIPP Student-Attrition Patterns Eyed. "Critics argue that the loss of students at some of the network's public schools is alarmingly high." This is gonna make Uncle Jay Mathews very angry, indeed.
Federal
Opinion
"Your Mama" & National Standards
Professor Dorn schools just about everyone in his recent post about accountability politics and national standards, focusing in particular on the issue of cut scores: "Whether one labels the tiers Expert, Proficient, Basic, and Below Basic; Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, and Blue; or Venti, Grande, and Tall, tying values to ordinal tiers doesn't tell us anything about the tiers themselves other than that someone wanted to label them. Confusing cut scores with rigor is an act of policy machismo, not common sense. "Yo Mama's so wimpy, she's satisfied with Mississippi's cut scores." Nice.
Federal
Opinion
Dodd Staffer Moves To Campaign
As other may already know, MaryEllen McGuire, Dodd's former education staffer, has apparently moved to the Dodd 2008 campaign, taking the deputy policy director spot. Sharon Lewis is covering K12 issues in Dodd's legislative office, and Taniesha Woods has postsecondary. Congrats, condolences, per usual.
Education
Opinion
Preschool Fever And The Press
Journalists need to watch out for preschool fever, warns former LA Times reporter Richard Lee Colvin in this post from his generally pro-preschool blog Early Stories (Preschool as Crime-fighting). Glad to see it. There's all too much preschool fever out there as it is, among advocates and elected officials. Another slew of soft news stories would just about do me in.
Education
Opinion
Media Fellowship Applications Decline
One of the little-known challenges of running yearlong media fellowship programs is that it's hard to get top-notch people to participate. According to this NYT article, it's getting even harder of late, numerically and otherwise (Fewer Journalists Seeking Fellowships), The Knight program at Stanford did not receive any applications from employees at The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and some other large newspapers.
Federal
Opinion
National (Yawn) Standards (Again)
The Washington Post editorial page comes out for national standards (Why We Need National Standards) and -- no big surprise -- EdSec Spellings comes out against them (Let the States Set Their Own Standards). Is there any new news here? Not much. Just summertime filler, I guess. All the more irrelevant given the stumbling bumbling efforts of the current Congress (Why Washington Can’t Get Much Done NYT).
Federal
Opinion
What To Make Of The IES Comparability Report
In no particular order, some of the small but important things to glean from this week's slew of NCLB-related reports: (1) Why didn't the Secretary stop the IES from trampling over all the "good" CEP coverage with its comparability report? (2) Gotta love the "I'm not judging" rhetoric from the Secretary, who's still not convinced about national standards (for good reason, (3) Anyone else notice that high standards (NC) don't necessarily translate into higher achievement (SC just as high on NAEP)?, (4) Or, that Kennedy has already bigfooted Dodd on the national standards issue?, (5) Last but not least, I must really be on the Department's shit list since no one invited me to call in about the IES report.
Education
Opinion
Chicago Paper Reinforces Depleted Education Team
Bucking the nationwide trend, the Chicago Tribune bought out three of the paper's four education reporters -- and then promptly shifted folks over from other beats to help the cause. Carlos Sadovi has been the courts reporter, which will give him an interesting perspective. He's also a Spanish-speaker. Johnathon Briggs has spent three three years on the Urban Affairs team. Congrats and condolences, per usual. The two are already being raked over the coals at my other blog, District299.com.