Edu Commentary

There has been a lot of low-level (and not so low-level) buzz about data from Caroline Hoxby’s recent charter school study. Basically, the whispering campaign goes like this: Don’t trust (or in the case of reporters, write about) the study because she doesn’t share her data. Leave aside that the core insinuation here is the serious charge that a tenured professor at Harvard is engaging in academic misconduct, it’s also just not true and a pretty tacky way to challenge the research anyway. Here’s a link that will get you the data if you’re interested.

Incidentally, Hoxby may be a conservative, but, contrary to what is apparently conventional wisdom in some circles, that doesn’t make her research invalid on its face.

Update: Sorry for the bad link, fixed now. My fault.

Washington Times’ Archibald writes about the ELC situation.

Before this school district goes too far down this road, they might want to reflect on the experience of this school district…

Seems like Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier bolsters the district’s case, but the National Rifle Association is pretty relentless.

See also this useful ASBJ write-up here.

Here are two charter schools that are doing exactly what critics allege: Skimming certain kinds of students!

Preuss School UCSD, only takes students if they are low-income and neither parent has finished college. Remember, these are the very students who allegedly make achievement gap closing impossible. Yet at Preuss all apply to four-year colleges and of the first graduating class 91 percent are going on to four-year schools.

Kipp Adelante did so well its first year open, with a low-income/high minority population, that more affluent students started applying. As a public school, the school must take students first-come first-served or by lottery. How did the school respond? It stepped up outreach and recruitment in low-income neighborhoods even more to ensure that it continued to serve the students it opened to serve.

Public charter schools nationwide serve more low-income and minority students than traditional public schools. This is in no small part because many schools are explicitly targeting these students. This scandalous skimming of the most underserved students must stop! So remember, results like these don’t matter, ideology does! To the barricades! It’s very important to discredit such schools as quickly as possible.

*Photo credits: The Eduwife.

AEI hosted a seminar on small schools recently, more here.

“There’s nothing I’d like better than if most people who gave me that [conservative or right-of-center] label didn’t mean asshole.”

Former Berkeley professor and current Manhattan Institute fellow John H. McWhorter in The Chronicle of Higher Education (September 24, 2004). Incidentally, he’s really not a conservative anyway.

More on this.

Another “grassroots” website working against NCLB. Who needs Republicans anyway?

From Republicans we hear a lot about tax credits for education. Yet apparently plain old tax credits for low-income Americans, which presumably could be spent on education along with other things, are bad news?

Also, Washington Post editorial board weighs-in on the candidates and education. They let the President off too easy on No Child implementation but they obviously didn’t get pumped up and mobilized at a house party…

No lifeboats today, instead we have a new captain! Ted Rebarber currently head of Accountability Works will take over as the new CEO of the Education Leaders Council, current CEO Lisa Keegen stepping down at the end of next month. ELC and Accountability Works will merge. Rebarber is very sharp, and has management experience, but will this give funders and appropriators the shot of courage they need?

Ed Week’s Richard has much more here…

Good luck Ted!

And Edu Commentaryeteers…probably best to keep those personal flotation devices close by for a while longer…just in case!