Edu Commentary

Like others, Edu Commentary was skeptical about whether ELC was going to be able to pull out of its tailspin. Yet they seem to be doing just that (and caught a big break with the election, Edu Commentary assumes the early exit polls caused an anxious afternoon at ELC world headquarters!). Here’s the agenda (pdf) for their annual conference (December 3-4), rescheduled from October. It’s a little light on the bipartisanship (isn’t unity the order of the day now???) but some interesting folks nonetheless.

If you go, don’t miss the dynamite panel on standards and assessments with Achieve’s Matt Gandal, Princeton Review’s John Katzman, NWA’s Allan Olson, and ELC’s Ted Rebarber. Similarly, the charming and brilliant Denzel McGuire, a key Republican education aide in the Senate, speaks about special education and IDEA No Child [sorry, fingers moving faster than mind]. Not-to-be-missed for tea leaf watchers.

Edu Commentary won’t be there (he’s well over his Orlando quota for the year) but any feedback via email much appreciated…

A Mid-Atlantic urban administrator writes Edu Commentary about No Child Left Behind, he/she’s a fan, here is why:

…the public has no idea just how powerful NCLB is….and that the [Bush] administration has actually failed to effectively convey what it’s truly all about and what it’s truly accomplishing…



…for the first time in years, in the poorest performing of this city’s schools, the discussion and focus is all about kids doing grade level work. Not about eking out gains, moving kids closer to grade level, but actually about moving them to grade level…



…for the first time, administrators and teachers are looking at the data constantly…and that in many of the lowest performing schools, it’s transforming the way in which educators talk about kids…schools are starting to understand that this is all about kids. That improving from having 5% of a middle school’s graduating 8th graders to 15%…which is what AYP’s [adequate yearly progress] “Safe Harbor” requirements is all about…actually comes down to committing to having thirty 8th-graders leave on grade level, versus just ten, in an average-sized urban middle school…



…I’m seeing that happen in many schools…the criticism that this can be easily manipulated or leads to ‘test prep city’ is totally misguided. We’ve done test prep every year for years….and our lowest performing schools haven’t moved. At all. [NCLB] is forcing us to look at grade level standards, and figure out what it’s going to take to move kids to them. And, in our schools that are now moving, the challenge is now tomove from 15% of the graduating 8th graders to 25%….and so, in a middle school that just two years ago had 10 students head off to high school being able to do grade level work….they are now aiming (and on track!) to send 50 students on to high school fully able to compete, graduate and go on to higher ed if they want.



This is a totally misunderstood law…[NCLB] is a wonderful tool and leverage point for district leaders…if they choose to buy in….those that don’t, are missing out on a great opportunity.

Wash. Post’s Jay Mathews takes an interesting and fair look at the experience of Edison Schools in Philadelphia.

Robert Kimball is still beating the dropout drum in Houston, but this will likely have less traction now that the election is over.

Karl Rove wants to think we are relieving the Mark Hanna days, and he might be right. But do we have to go through the Scopes trial again, too? There is a lot of this going around in several states. Link via Teach and Learn.

This weekend was the 19th Annual World Championship Punkin’ Chunkin’ in Sussex County, Delaware. Competitors from around the country matched wits and machines to see who could hurl an 8lb frozen pumpkin the furthest. The winner, Old Glory, hurled their second pumpkin an impressive 4,224′, shy of the world record but good enough to win the day.

An increasing number of school groups, like this one below, are entering. It’s a great way for students to learn about physics, engineering, sportsmanship, and c’mon, it’s a whole lot of fun… Edu Commentary thinks that in addition to their obvious sagaciousness; this school won the youth trebuchet division!

Photo Credit: The Eduwife

NY Daily News’ Williams takes a look at an interesting argument put forward by NYC’s Klein in the school finance case (but possibly too late in the game…).

Here’s a case of poor charter school authorizing from MN. They’re experimenting out there with allowing a variety of community entities to sponsor public charter schools. But, for the authorizers, as Spiderman learned, with great power comes great responsibility. Looks like it was not exercised here. For the school’s part, a lot of poor planning and apparently, according to folks on the ground, an aversion to taking advantage of various supports that were in place to help new schools get off the ground.

Here are some interesting thoughts on charter schools, rural communities, and the WA state referendum. Via Jacobs.

Wonder why some teachers are understandably skeptical of pay-for-performance schemes? Here’s an indication.

Keep an eye on IDEA during the lame duck session. These folks will! Via Educationnews.org

In Jay Mathews’ Washington Post column Harvard’s Marty West and the American Federation of Teachers Howard Nelson debate the recent AFT charter report.

It’s a worthwhile read if you’re interested in the issue but will likely do nothing to clear the air around the basic issues here. That’s in no small part because West can only wait three paragraphs to accuse the AFT of being hypocrites when it comes to using test score data to make inferences about school quality. He, and several coauthors, unfortunately employed the same argument in a Wall Street Journal column immediately after the AFT report was released and missed a golden opportunity to set the record straight.

It’s a line of argument that is counterproductive for two reasons. For starters, except apparently at the New York Times, there is little doubt among major education journalists about the AFT’s reliability as an objective source of information on these issues. Second, raising these issues obscures the real problems with how the AFT presented the NAEP data (and of course how the NYT reported it) in a cloud of ideological back and forth. People assume that this is just another iteration of the left-right education debate. Unpacking the charter data for lay readers would be a lot more productive than pushing a point that has a lot more to do with the voucher debate than charters. To be fair, West makes a lot of good points about the AFT study, but probably after many readers have stopped reading.

Nelson offers thin gruel. He continues to accuse the Bush Administration of suppressing this and other information about charter schools (Yoohoo! The election is over…we lost. Enough is enough…). Careful readers will see that Nelson is skating on thin empirical ice and frequently seeks to change the topic.

The debate also gets into the recent Hoxby study and is well worth reading. Still, one wishes that the insightful Jay Mathews, who knows how to aggressively moderate a debate and get at the facts, had done more of that here.

West clearly wins on points but it could have been a knockout.

The Bush Administration has signaled that they are going to get serious about low-performing schools during a second term. Good enough, but this is just way over the line…

A week ago a Democratic activist with education ties in Ohio told Edu Commentary that Bush would get 16 percent of the African-American vote there primarily because of school choice and gay marriage. He worried that in an extremely close race it could cost Kerry the state. It seemed like a high estimate but according to the exits, that’s exactly what happened (in 2000 Bush earned 9 percent of the black vote in OH).

It’s too early to discern exactly why (and Bush also increased his share of the African-American vote in Florida from 6 percent to 12 percent) but this is a trend worth examining. Bush’s national share of the African American vote only increased by 2 percentage points. There was a lot of under the radar pro-voucher organizing and boutique targeted advertising going on in Ohio, was the same true of FL? Important to disentangle these issues since they have obvious ramifications going forward.

The good folks at Booker Rising are all atwitter and weigh-in on this, too, but are a little too deterministic, it didn’t cost Kerry the state.

Update: LA Times exits (pdf) put Bush’s share of the African-American vote at 14 percent. Via Booker Rising.

The delightful Dorothy Rich has unveiled a new website for her MegaSkills program. Worth checking out if you’re interested in home and school issues.

CT wants to pay great teachers in challenging schools more and offer other incentives for teachers.

From Newsday:

Under the plan, 1,000 teachers who are successful in reducing dropout rates and raising student achievement would be eligible for a $3,000 bonus and a two-year contract that protects them from layoffs. Urban and suburban teachers would also be offered similar bonuses to trade districts for two years…

The [teachers’] union is balking because it says teachers should be paid based on experience, not merit. Union officials say the plan is illegal because it would conflict with collective bargaining and fair dismissal laws in the event of layoffs, said Rosemary Coyle, president of the Connecticut Education Association.

Righto! Remember, the kids come first! These ideas aren’t perfect, but would a little innovation kill us?