StickWithANose

Back in June, I noted that the growing un-popularity of D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and D.C. School Chancellor Michelle Rhee among Fenty’s political base posed a serious risk to his re-election campaign, and I also noted that the oligarchs were weighing in with a threat to pull their funding from the DCPS experiment if their [...]

As the public hand-wringing over the slow pace of re-development in post-Katrina New Orleans reaches its crescendo with the five year anniversary of the disaster, the subject of public schooling in NOLA is again receiving a lot of attention from news media. EdWeek mirrors other major media outlets in constructing a he said/she said narrative [...]

As the luster has begun to fade on the Obama administration, the weight of a poor economy, the health care reform debacle, and the growing distaste for pointless land wars in Asia have been steadily grinding away at Team Obama’s poll numbers. One bright spot for Obama has been that he has polled well on [...]

If you haven’t been regularly visiting Tom Hoffman’s place you should be. He has been consistent and thorough in de-constructing the roll-out of the Common Core Standards Initiative. Yesterday, he dove into an example of the disconnect between standards and student objectives…
That is, they yadda yadda the CCSSI standards, but what the students should [...]

As I’ve noted previously, one of the primary functions of a think tank troll is to not only promote the agenda of the organization and its funders but to also attack its perceived enemies. Yesterday, the Education Sector’s Bill Tucker offered us yet another example of this dynamic in action. Noted educator and critic Alfie [...]

I generally like Steve Benen’s work at Washington Monthly. However, like all professional bloggers, his job often entails highlighting the issues being pushed by the organization for which he works, often issues with which he obviously has little to no expertise. What caught my eye yesterday was that on the same day that Steve published [...]

Today’s Washington Post offers us a surprisingly critical look at this years new crop of under-prepared teachers being channeled into the most challenging schools in the country. While still framed in the “he said/she said” format that I hate so much, the article is notable for at least offering some valid critiques of the TFA [...]

One of the most frustrating aspects of our current push for high academic standards and achievement [masquerading as a push for educational equality] is the expansion of ’schooling’ to the early years of childhood and with it the increasing fetishization of assessment. It is now commonplace for policy-makers and politicians to establish their educational street-creds [...]

Today’s “Answer Sheet” features an article by Justin Snider of Teachers College that demonstrates the circularity of educational debate. The issue Snider addresses is the concept of academic rigor, but all that he seems to accomplish is to demonstrate the ways in which education policy has been going in circles for the past three decades. [...]