From BW:
Chad Aldeman takes a look at benefit pressure on salaries – and how the two are intertwined.
Kirsten Schmitz on special educaiton and charter schools (and all schools).
ICYMI yesterday Bellwether put out a new analysis of teacher data showing that the shortage rhetoric is pretty divorced from what’s actually going on.
Elsewhere:
The other day we talked about how Dana Milbank fell for some spin on Janus impacts and why while the case won’t cause the sky to fall tomorrow the overall trajectory is not a good one for teachers unions. Here’s more data on that:
What makes this completely ridiculous is that the people who predicted the labor movement’s funeral were almost all supporters of the labor movement. In fact, the apocalyptic prophecies were an integral part of the unions’ arguments before the Supreme Court.
If you want to refresh on Janus, here’s the Bellwether deck on the case and its context.
Marguerite Roza on rainy days and economic cycles.
Paul Hill on the billionaire problem in education rhetoric. Obvious but overlooked point in our fever swamp approach to improving schools for kids – and more generally. If you are against Eli Broad or Reed Hastings engaging in policy but not as concerned about George Soros and Tom Steyer then you’re not really against billionaires being involved in policy debates, you’re against people you don’t agree with being involved. That’s natural in terms of human nature, but it’s not an especially convincing point of view?
In Chicago Bill Daley is proposing a merger of some of the city’s education assets – K-12 and two-year – to improve seamlessness and consequently quality for kids. It’s an intriguing idea and the teachers’ union is vehemently opposed (“one of the more ridiculous ideas we’ve heard in recent memory”) and people are writing that off to reflexive behavior. But they have a point about the facts on the ground. As my colleague, and Chicagoian, Lina Bankert has noted, City Colleges has to be substantively improved otherwise any articulation plans with it are a mirage for kids. Martha Kanter also notes that unless it’s done carefully ideas like this can increase the problem of under matching.