Friday Reading List: Best Arne Headline of the Week
Happy Friday!
Before you head over to D.C.'s 9:30 Club to buy tickets for all upcoming events, so as not to miss another surprise appearance by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, check out these good reads:
Dueling Op-Eds: The conservative Wall Street Journal accused the Ed Sec of sitting on an Institute of Education Sciences report that showed some positive results for the District of Columbia voucher program until after a bill that would sunset the program was finalized. But then former IES head Russ Whitehurst attempted to put the kibbosh on that kind of talk in this Brookings Institution editorial.
Reid My Lips, No Waivers: Senate President Harry Reid doesn't think his state should get a waiver on the maintenance-of-effort provisions in the stimulus law, according to this story.
Speaking of the stim: The New York Times has some suggestions for the U.S. Department of Education on how to craft further stimulus guidance. Do you think they're a little optimistic about the department's available leverage or do you think the editorial is right on? Discuss.
And, finally, the winner of the Best Arne Headline of the Week: Is the New Republic's Seyward Darby, with this gem.
Comments
Alyson -
I think the NYT editorial understandably wants to see the stimulus money used to leverage more adherence to fair distribution of "quality teachers". But the stimulus is the stimulus; it's not real education legislation. So the debates thus far, I think, are too narrowly focused and are either premature or somewhat miss the point.
What's needed is a robust, much more inclusive debate -- one that allows more voices than just the ones with the most foundation money and big-city connections. And for that I think Congress must take the lead, particularly the House Education and Labor Committee and its chairman Rep. George Miller.
We need a major set of hearings on the future of public education in America. And I would propose two of the first to testify should be EdWeek's "Bridging Differences" bloggers Deb Meier and Diane Ravitch.
Posted by: Mitchell Hirsch | April 10, 2009 7:23 PM