Edu Commentary

More action coming on charters in MA…a textbook study of the issues outlined below…

Give Democrats some credit, it was almost a week after the election before the recriminations started…

But they’ve started….The New Republic is recriminations central right now, with an editorial, a piece by Marty Peretz, an insider look by Ryan Lizza, and a call for still more recriminations by TNR editor Peter Beinart.

Also, in The Wall Street Journal former Lieberman aide Dan Gerstein says it was less Kerry than larger problems for the party.

Both Peretz and Gerstein cite teachers’ unions as one cause of the problems Democrats have making a case for progressive change on education policy. In the large sense that’s certainly true enough and TNR has been pointing it out for some time. Yet it’s not fair to lay that at Kerry’s feet. He did challenge teacher union orthodoxy (most notably their quasi-Marxist fealty to pay schemes that do not reward teachers for challenging assignments, special skills, or exceptional performance) and he didn’t mindlessly carry their water in his policy proposals.

But, this election was not about education. Other than as a framing issue, Kerry would have gained little by relentlessly hammering on education policy issues. In fact, it would have distracted from the issues of security and leadership that he did need to emphasize. And, Kerry’s support for No Child but concern about how the Bush Administration has handled implementation is one of those positions that’s at once defensible but hard to explain to voters in a 30-second soundbite and easy for an opponent to twist.

Going forward, however, an obvious challenge for Democrats is to put forward a crisper, more progressive, and reform oriented vision on education, as well as other issues, because the tired old dogs just don’t hunt anymore.

See this essay by Andrei Cherney in TNR for more ideas.

Plenty to read around the web, but save time and just read this Washington Post account. It’s the best around, basically has it all, and you don’t even need to read between the lines too much to see what’s going on (note to investors, should Bill Bennett’s comments be interpreted as a call to sell?). Odds are now on Spellings as the replacement…she’s talented, competent, and pragmatic but it’s unclear what she can do on the unity front…On the other hand, she’s not a voucher zealot and doesn’t drink that or other conservative Kool-Aid so ‘wingers likely to be disappointed….

A helpful reader sent a link to this NPR item about a school in Chicago. Interesting story…

In Virginia, the anti-No Child Left Behind revolt fizzles. Across the country — for a variety of reasons — this is a story of a dog that didn’t bark, some enterprising reporter will write that up sooner or later…Virginia’s SOL program is excellent yet NCLB critics in Virginia would have more credibility if they’d at least acknowledge and highlight the approximately 20 point gaps between black and white students in reading and math and the smaller, though still significant gaps between white and Hispanic students. Though positive in many ways, one thing that Virginia’s SOLs did not do is explicitly hold schools accountable for gap closing.

Also re NCLB, This Week in Education writes up a new NCLB memo from the NEA that’s floating around. The nut? About 10,000 schools in school improvement because of No Child. Sounds high until you consider that there were about 8,000 under the previous 1994 version of the law (though a Department of Ed analysis in the late 1990s found that only half got any assistance at all, fewer still meaningful help). Neither the memo nor This Week points the historical context out. The difference now, of course, is that being in school improvement actually means something.

Very provocative piece on ideology in higher education from The Chronicle of Higher Ed.

The National Council on Teacher Quality has released a handy primer (pdf) about policies that can help or hinder efforts to improve teaching.

More Scopes!

Andy Anderson runs a cool blog about school law, in loco parentis. Per this post he also points up this Volkh post about the whole Scopes business.

Also, if school law issues float your boat, check out this WSJ column about the potential splitting of the 9th Circuit. Lots of implications, education decisions among them.

If you’re dropping in because of the bizarre promotional email sent by the Education Leaders Council’s flacks, be sure to read the entire item, not just the selective bits in the email…the minor correction will make more sense, too.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Who says young people are not passionate about politics?

From MN:

Three zoo school students face charges for using a bat to beat another student who taunted them about being John Kerry supporters days after the contentious election…



“It’s a good thing to see young people interested and excited about politics,” said Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom. “It’s obviously very disturbing to see this kind of violence over it.”

Here’s a great and pretty comprehensive roundup of state education action from election day via Ed Week’s Hoff and Trotter.

In Business Week William Symonds discusses the trend of public universities seeking to operate like private ones.

Catalyst Chicago points out that the new requirements for teacher quality don’t do much to actually improve teacher quality…key graf:

[CPS Official] Botana says the revamped requirements won’t necessarily dilute teacher quality. But, he concedes, “If you equate having a degree in the content area with being higher quality, then the new requirements probably don’t help the quality pool.”

In other words, unless you think that knowing something about the content you’re teaching matters, this is no biggie…

From NYC Samuel Freedman looks at small schools and growing pains related to that initiative. The Gothamist says, forget the big picture, the even the bathrooms are a dump. One solution here, used by some schools, is have the adults and the kids all use the same bathrooms. Empowers and respects the kids and you can bet the toilet paper and soap get refilled…

The Washington Post reports on high-achieving students using transfer provisions under No Child Left Behind that were ostensibly designed to help struggling students. This is a tough dilemma; the obvious answer is to restrict transfers to students who are below grade level or in subgroups that are not making Adequate Yearly Progress. However, NCLB’s architects (unfortunately they don’t make the story) were concerned that limiting the transfer rights to such students would lead to a “push-out” problem as schools sought to send struggling students elsewhere rather than focus on them. On a more basic level, wouldn’t allowing parents to chose from among various public schools as a matter of course make more sense and increase buy-in anyway? When you stop and think about it, it seems amazing that we’re still having a huge debate about whether all parents should be able to choose among public providers of a public service. Not a way to ensure constituency loyalty over time, that’s for sure…

Update: D.C. Education Blog offers a take on this, more blunt, but he probably speaks for a lot of parents…