Edu Commentary

Edu Commentary is in Indianapolis (home to one of the nation’s finest blues bars). The mayor here, Democrat Bart Peterson, is the only mayor in the country who can authorize charter schools himself. He’s got quite a variety now and you can learn more about them here.

This morning, Edu Commentary visited two schools. One, run by left-leaning folks was very regimented and structured, basically hard-core traditional. It was a KIPP school. The other, run by right-leaning folks, was very progressive, individualized, and child-centered. They’re both great schools, but they help give the lie to the way discussions about education and charter schools are too often shoehorned into political frameworks that just don’t fit.

Edu Commentary didn’t bother to watch Secretary of Education Rod Paige’s speech on Tuesday night. But, thankfully, someone did. The other day Edu Commentary let a lefty point out some irony so in the interest of fairness, balance, and equal time here is a review of Paige from a Republican who has worked on the Hill and around D.C.

I can’t believe you had nothing on Edu Commentary about the Paige speech last night. The delegates seemed to be sitting on their hands during much of the “No Child Left Behind Act is the greatest thing since sliced bread” speech. And, when Paige mentioned funding, it seemed like dead silence. Though Paige was at least better than the Bush girls.



More recap from last night here.

One of Edu Commentary’s colleagues has started a new blog on politics: New Donkey. It has commentary on current political goings on, interesting historical analysis, and plenty of edge. The writer has one of the keenest political minds in Washington and a tremendous knowledge of political history.

If centrist and progressive politics are your thing, or you just want to read some insightful commentary you probably will not find anywhere else, then this is a blog you should be checking regularly.

Commence predictable back-and-forth…some vouchers in the new D.C. program are going unused. Fodder for both sides here.

Credit Where Credit Is Due: These are a few jobs that Bush Administration policies demonstrably have created!

A pretty compelling argument for external accountability from MI. One tease:

One Detroit elementary, for example, gave itself a perfect score for its facilities despite being closed in October because it started sinking into the ground.

Will urban education reform become like boxing? The Broad Foundation currently offers an annual $1 million prize for urban education. Now, the National School Boards Association is launching their own urban education award. McGraw-Hill is ponying up $5K for the NSBA award.

There is some overlap, for instance Norfolk, VA, a demonstrably improving school district and Boston, another system on the rise, are candidates for both awards. Still, will we have split titles and/or unified belts in the future? Stay tuned…

Tightwad Afterthought: Can’t McGraw-Hill do better than $5K? It’s emblematic of the cheap way educators get treated vis a vis the way things work in other industries. Or, can’t someone else kick-in?

A reporter covering the protests in New York City emails Edu Commentary that there are some generational tensions among the protestors:

It was almost like a parody: baby boomers were complaining that today’s young anarchists have no intellectual base. They are able to send text messages to each other about where the next action will be, and yet they don’t have a clue about the world around them. They complained that none of the kids knew who Cesar Chavez or Saul Alinsky were.

Apparently the older protestors are, understandably, concerned that their messages will be lost in the mayhem and that the protests will not be taken seriously. There is no small irony here. One of the big arguments against academic standards is that it will hurt the ability of kids to think critically. Could it be that the opposite is true? Could arch-villain E.D. Hirsch be onto something?

The charter school flap will be featured today on NPR’s Talk of the Nation. If it’s not available in your area, you can listen here.

Update: You can hear audio or get a transcript here.



Bonus Update: Here, here, here, and here are four stories from Minnesota about charter schools (and they know something about them up there). A couple on the recent charter flap and one on growing demand for charter schools there. And, here is one more. Via Jacobs.

Still want more MN? OK, here is a bit more.

In case you missed them, here and here are accounts of Alan Greenspan’s comments the other day about entitlements. If you care about education finance this is not an arcane or irrelevant issue. In fact, it’s a central one. The looming resource squeeze as the baby-boomers head into their golden years threatens to swamp all kinds of social spending.

In addition to entitlement reform, this means that different priorities must make themselves as competitive as possible in the fight for resources. In the case of public education (where relatively few Americans are direct stakeholders in terms of having their kids in school) this means broadening the coalition supporting education funding. It seems that (a) improving the schools serving poor and minority kids so that parents there are more satisfied and less eager for other options (b) expanding customization within the public sector to again bind more people to public education and (c) improving overall performance and productivity.

Continuing down the current path of denying that serious problems exist seems like a sure way to end up fighting a constant rear-guard action when the geezer war comes.

Also, Columbia TC’s Levine makes a similar point in today’s LA Times.

Update: Edu Commentary leaves a big irony behind. An alert reader writes that: I was looking forward to Edu Commentary pointing out the irony of it all: Levine is concerned that policymakers might focus more on healthcare than school improvement efforts, which is exactly what Richard Rothstein’s book, published by Teachers College with a glowing foreword from Levine, tells them to do.



There’s a nice Chicken Little meets Lizzie Borden aspect to it. Good point!

There are a couple of ways to look at the new charter school data from Ohio. One way is that there are a lot of struggling charter schools in Ohio. Another way is that there are a lot of struggling charter schools in Ohio. Hopefully the efforts to improve authorizing there are going to pay dividends.

The AFT deconstructs the WSJ op-ed on charter schools and MO deconstructs the letter, here. More from AFT here.

Conservative angst about No Child Left Behind…via This Week in Education.

CBS revisits the Texas Miracle debate. Via Educationnews.org

NYT’s Schemo reports that a lot of disabled students are falling through the accountability cracks.

Considering all these politics, this column by Joanne Jacobs in the San Jose Mercury News is a must-read.

Wash Post’s Singletary asks the common sense question: Why does a small tax-break for teachers who spend their own money on supplies fall by the wayside in the midst of the current tax cut bonanza?

In AZ, a math initiative from the Rodel Foundation is paying off.

Finally, despite all the protesting this week, a worrisome decline in college activism…