Edu Commentary

NYT and Wash. Post look at the new SAT writing section. Pretty predictable Patrick Welsh article in The Post’s Outlook, interesting op-ed by Curtis Sittenfeld in The Times. Outlook is valuable real estate, what about soliciting pieces from some other area teachers (like, for instance, one Curtis Sittenfeld who teaches at St. Albans)? If Edu Commentary’s email is any indication there are many that write ably and have a lot of interesting things to say.

In today’s Post, Michael Dobbs (who incidentally just won some awards for his impromptu coverage of the tsunami disaster) looks at the new SAT, as well, very worth reading.

Fairtest’s NoTest’s man at the NYT, Sam Dillon, returns to Utah in Sunday’s paper for a look at what folks there think of the law. Obviously a lot of them don’t like it, hence Utah’s strange stature as a “progressive” cause these days. But, based on the last Utah foray, interpret the story with caution. Via Kausfiles, this from last February:

No Bias Left Behind! Compare the New York Times’ account of a Utah meeting in which federal officials sought to calm fears about the No Child Left Behind Act (“Bush Education Officials Find New Law a Tough Sell”) to the account in the local paper (“No Child Left Behind Comes Into Focus”). Predictably, the Times missed this part of the story:

Afterwards, some parents and minority advocates said they didn’t want things to change too much. The law forces schools to confront weaknesses, said Karen Duffy, a University of Utah researcher who studies education issues for American Indians.

American Indians have long lagged behind their classmates, she said, and the school system has failed to solve the problem. “This law is about the only hope they have,” she said.

More to the point, thankfully buried deep (6 grafs from the bottom a 28 graf article) in Sunday’s story is the nut of the issue:

Utah’s main goal, however, is to gain federal approval to use the state’s own testing and school accountability program instead of the federal system. But Ms. Spellings has said that a non-negotiable feature is the law’s requirement that test results be broken down by student groups, so that parents and other can identify when minority, white and other student groups are achieving at different levels.

Utah does not break down test results by student groups. Last weekend, Mr. Huntsman met with Ms. Spellings, while Mr. Bridgewater and Dr. Harrington met separately with several of the secretary’s aides. But the federal officials did not budge on Utah’s request to use its own accountability system, Mr. Bridgewater said.

Right, against disaggregation….very progressive…they also like tax credits (another really progressive idea, just great for poor people….) and vouchers out there, too. The strange bedfellows NCLB foes are willing to make in their frantic quest to discredit the law are leading them down a path to a place they’re not going to like…No NLCB doesn’t mean a return to the old days of business as usual…

Two new ECS looks at the takeover/restructuring effort in Chester Upland, Pennsylvania here and here (pdf). Ed Week’s Gewertz takes a look, too. Punchline: After a few years, looks like more of an example of what not to do than what to do. Yet despite that, some modest improvement. Too many compromises lead to a muddled situation and it takes resources to do this right.

Indy Mayor Bart Peterson on charter schools and Indy.

Not to beat a dead horse, but Brink returns to the issue of the progressivism of No Child Left Behind. He essentially argues that it might be progressive if it were funded enough. This, of course, falls squarely into the “it sucks but fund it trap”. If the law’s no good or regressive, then it’s no good and regressive regardless of its appropriation. If its goals are worthy, then they’re worthy regardless of Washington budget fights. Moreover, funding is a strange measure of progressivism in the first place. By this facile logic, President Bush is more progressive on education than President Clinton. Is Brink going to take up that case?

Rather, progressivism has something to do with progress (look closely, the word is in there somewhere, though sometimes hard to discern these days) and reform. Roosevelt didn’t champion the New Deal just because it contained spending but because it reoriented the role of government in society. No Child, while obviously not as sweeping, does build on the 1994 Clinton ESEA law and further reorient the role of government toward forcing states to address the achievement gap. That’s one big reason progressives should like it.

Besides, as Willie Sutton noted, if you want money then you go where the money is. In education that means the states because they provide the bulk of the funding. No Child is the best tool to come along in a while to ensure better intrastate school finance equity. That’s another reason progressives should like it. But blinded by their loathing for President Bush too many invent reasons not to (even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then, you know?). Here are some who don’t. These ones, too.

Update: One reader, lefty Hill type (but a hard lefty in Beinhartese) writes: Re your NCLB item today: What about some numbers. 49M kids in K-12, $11B to “full funding.” Could you revolutionize education on $230/head? Of course, that number could be as high as $300 for kids in some Title I schools. Windfall!

Interesting Teacher Magazine commentary. Similar to this.

A common complaint about public charter schools is that they don’t admit all students as traditional public schools purportedly do. Legally, charters are not allowed to do this, though unfortunately a small subset likely does in informal ways — an oversight/authorizer issue to be sure.

But, what’s lost in debate about this issue is that many public schools have formal admissions requirements and do not admit all comers. So where’s the attack on magnets for skimming? In fact, in urban settings, charters are often compared to competitive schools in debates about student achievement.

Here’s one look at this from a new edublog written by a former Boston teacher.

Important Sam Freedman NYT column about the financial woes of Catholic schools with multiple implications. Here’s one. As these schools contract it raises even more questions about the efficacy of vouchers as a way to increase the number of seats in high quality schools for disadvantaged students. Here’s another. Catholic schools and traditional public schools are losing some students to the same places — public charter schools. Here’s one more. These schools do work really well for some kids so no one should wish for their demise.

It’s Read Across America Week, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman is ginning up for it.

Alan Bersin threw himself on the tracks for this, but the parents and community in San Diego are getting their way. Reaction from San Diego Education Association here.

Update: A well-connected observer makes an important point that’s implicit if you’ve been following this, but is important enough to spell out: TEACHERS at those schools bucked the SDEA and took part in the planning process!

Update II: Visit San Diego, see for yourself, and meet this guy.