Friday, June 03, 2005
More States' Rights Progressivism
Hey, they did it!
Another triumph for progressivism in CT:
State Sen. Thomas P. Gaffey, D-Meriden, who is co-chairman with Fleischmann of the legislature's education committee, cited the Utah case. "As Republican as they are, if they're able to say we're not going to do these silly federal mandates, why isn't Connecticut standing up and doing the same thing?"
Send in Gordon and the shock troops!
President Bush is nominating a new assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education. Good pick, going to make the debate more interesting.
NYT reports on special education grad rates there...
New charter data from MI here (pdf).
In NYC, new test score results. NYT reports on them here, and Daily News reports on the fast turnaround of a TV ad to inject them into the mayor's race. However, smart money in NYC says that there may be less to these scores than the 4th and 8th grade ones recently released because something may be up with the 5th-grade test...You can still overplay a strong hand...
Spelling War!
The indefatigable Mr. Sun is live blogging the National Spelling Bee. He's a fervent fan, and is doing play-by-play and color commentary.
Standard and Poor's has a short report (pdf) out on urban school district performance. Some interesting nuggets tucked in.
Charter schooling in Chicago, a lot of promise, a lot of challenges, a new PPI report by Robin Lake and Lydia Rainey shows. Chicago Trib ed board weighs in here.
Previous reports on NYC, Indy, CA, MN, AZ, TX, and OH can be found here.
Blair On Risk
British Prime Minister Tony Blair discusses risk in public policymaking in this speech he gave last week to IPPR, a London-based think tank.
More NYC...Small Jailbreak To Free The UFT Two?...And, Rubber Soul!
NY Post's Sager says Democrats are defecting on charters in NY. And Newsday joins the fray of those looking at the UFT contract writing about rubber rooms (not nearly as fun as they sound...).
Trust Edu Commentary, you want to read a story that includes the line:
Another woman told Newsday of her own $2,500 fine for allegedly trying to strangle a student.
Edu Commentary notes poetically that USA Today's Jill Lawrence is easily impressed and the National PTA is putting Margaret Mead to the test. Can 3,400 emails (from an organization claiming 6 million members) change the world? Although it's only about six per member of congress and senator, they do take those form generated emails very seriously...This seems like a more immediate problem.
The always practical Mr. Sun offers up some really handy advice for recent graduates.
Matt Miller pitches his grand bargain on teacher pay in Saturday's NYT. It's an interesting and important idea although some teachers already do make $100K plus a year. Teach and Learn's Lach offers some interesting thoughts on the politics of all this.
From Sunday's NYT, here's a brave high school senior, and one who can write quite an essay.