Transparency
Accountability
Success for All Again Scores Big, And Loses, in i3 Contest
U.S. Department of Education records confirm that Success for All was the highest-rated Investing in Innovation scale-up application again in 2013. And for a second year in a row, it didn't get funded.
Accountability
Transparency Watch: Ed. Dept. Refuses to Disclose Top i3 Scale-Up Applicant
The U.S. Department of Education is refusing to disclose the top-scoring but unfunded Investing in Innovation scale-up application, which scored 77.83, because the score was not "approximately 80."
Accountability
Transparency Watch: NAEP Governing Board's Puzzling Media Access Policy
The board that oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress is refusing to disclose its media policy on who does, and does not, get early access to test data.
Accountability
Transparency Watch: Will We See Ed. Dept.'s Waiver Data Analysis?
The U.S. Department of Education will base part of its decision to renew a state's waiver on data analyses that it has not committed to making public.
Federal
Transparency Watch: Federal ELL Clearinghouse Remains in Limbo
The U.S. Department of Education is reviewing, for a second time, whether it followed federal contracting rules in a competition for a $1.5 million contract to manage the National Clearinghouse for English-Language Acquisition.
Teaching Profession
Opinion
A New Era of Classroom Transparency
Two middle school educators say their school's use of an online learning-management system has opened their classroom and transformed their teaching.
Accountability
Opinion
An Open Book in Clark County
Clark County's "Open Book" portal makes it easy for parents, taxpayers, journalists, and critics to view the district's revenue and expenses.
States
Transparency Questions Arise After Utah Board's Vote
The Utah Board of Education may have violated the state's Open Meetings Act when it selected new leadership on Dec. 7.
Accountability
Transparency Watch: Why Is Head Start Competition So Secretive?
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is not disclosing basic details about the competition in which Head Start providers are having to reapply for their funds.
Federal
Transparency Watch: Ed. Dept. More Open Than Most Federal Agencies?
The U.S. Department of Education is reducing its backlog of public-information requests, but it still takes the agency more than a month on average to fulfill even the simplest requests.
Accountability
Opinion
Leaders & Laggards Takes a Hard Look at Higher Ed
The Institute for a Competitive Workforce (an arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) yesterday published an expansive new state-by-state report on public higher education: Leaders and Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card on Public Postsecondary Education. The lead researcher on the effort was my talented AEI colleague Andrew Kelly, who put in six months of data gathering with the aid of crack AEI research associate Daniel Lautzenheiser and ICW's terrific Jaimie Matthews. (Full disclosure: I served as part of the project team, along with my Brookings Institution counterpart Russ Whitehurst; the Chamber's Margaret Spellings, Cheryl Oldham, and Dom Giandomenico; and Ben Wildavsky of the Kauffman Foundation).
Federal
Transparency Watch: How 'Public' is NCLB Waiver Judging?
The U.S. Department of Education is refusing to make public formal feedback letters it sent to the 11 states seeking waivers under No Child Left Behind.
Federal
Transparency Watch: NCLB Waiver Judges Identified
The field of 21 judges who will help decide which states get a waiver under the No Child Left Behind Act is dominated by education policy experts with deep experience working for state departments of education.