This Week in Education

Read These First
Needed: Better NCLB Politics -- Not More Policy
Why Teach For America?
Think Tank Hires Republican Education Staffer With Cool Glasses

NCLB News
Who Knew NCLB Was So Well-Liked?
Better Politics -- Not More Policy
Renaming NCLB
Critic Explains Internal Union Dynamics

Teachers & Teaching
Why Teach For America?
A Teacher's Thoughts In The New York Times

Campaign 2008
What Happens On Education When Hillary Wins The Nomination?
Edwards Turns To Education To Try And Get Traction
Plural Speech Gaffes For Bush

Think Tanks and Foundations
Think Tank Hires Republican Education Staffer With Cool Glasses
Deborah Bial: An Education "Genius"

Urban Education
Dallas Officials Enjoy Junket While Others Get Fired
Bringing Back Dunce Caps In New Orleans
Is It Time For "Differentiated" Discipline Policies?

Media Watch
"Godsend" Journalism In The NYT
New Face (To Me) Covering Education At The Post
LA Times Revamps, Relaunches Education Blog
Media Ignoring Universal Preschool For NCLB?

School Life
The Cupcake Wars
Spider-Man Vs. Moses
Stephen Colbert Is The Perfect Teach For America Candidate

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Remember the headline about Teach For America that came out in The Onion a couple of years ago (TFA Chews Up, Spits Out Another Ethnic-Studies Major)? Well, TFA’s come a long way since then, but it is no less frustratingly problematic.

More important, TFA now wants to be judged both as a short-term intervention and as a broad-based reform movement whose scope includes everything from KIPP to Michelle Rhee to scores of alums in elected office.This was either part of the plan all along or a slick “re-engineering” of TFA’s original mission to address widespread concerns that putting smart newbies in front of poor kids for two years wasn’t going to solve any real problems.

One big question is whether or not this two-pronged approach is fair or not to TFA teachers and the kids and colleagues they work with during their brief teaching stints.Another is whether TFA should have been focusing on expanding its members’ longevity and impact in the classroom rather than on increasing its numbers of districts and candidates.Last but not least – the verdict is out here – is whether TFA alums are more powerfully involved in school reform than they would have been anyway, and what good comes of it.

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UPDATE: Here's the big quote: ""The entire appeal equals about eight hours of current spending in Iraq. So just a few hours would send 150,000 children to school..."

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Teen Gets Perfect Scores on SAT, ACT USA Today
During the 2006-07 school year, more than 2.2 million ACT tests were administered. Only 177 came back with a 36. And of the nearly 2.6 million SAT exams taken, only 335 came back with a 2400.

Bill Clinton's bid to save the world LA Times
The former president's Clinton Global Initiative draws an array of leaders and activists, and plenty of money for their causes.

Prospective Principals Groomed Through TFA-District Partnerships EdWeek
TFA aims to have more than 800 alumni leading their own schools or districts by 2010, as part of a school leadership initiative launched last year.

Texting, Facebook used to alert students MSNBC.com
As the school year starts, colleges around the country are applying the lessons of Virginia Tech and using high technology to get the word out fast in a crisis.

Book Asks How Bad Schools Happen to Good Suburbs NY Sun
To write their book, "Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Choice," Ms. Murray and two other researchers at the San Franciscobased Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy studied California public schools.

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Charter schools aren't just for poor kids, anymore. This week's Education Gadfly digs out an interesting story from the San Jose Mercury about parents in affluent Palo Alto, Cal. successfully threatening to start a Mandarin immersion charter school if the district didn't create one on its own. Some folks in the article think this isn't what charters are "for." Not surprisingly, the Gadfly thinks differently (All in). If you don't give parents -- especially affluent ones -- what they want, then they simply exit the system. Which, as with health insurance risk pools, just makes things worse for those kids and teachers left behind.

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The Biz Of Knowledge has two "news of the weird" items this week -- or, rather, news of the tragic. One is about what happened at one Illinois school when the teacher asked a student to help move the TV cart into the classroom (19 million reasons to not let little Mariano help you move the television in the classroom), the other about a principal's drastic response to things going awry at work (Suicide ruled work-related). Yikes.

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Even if you don't care much what's happening in New Orleans, this USA Today update details some of the more hard-to-watch tactics that some schools there (and elsewhere) are employing to create a culture of high expectations (New Orleans school system re-educated):

"After breakfast and roll call, reading teacher Anne Felter walks through the aisles and distributes 26 large, laminated "YET" signs to selected students — those deemed "not there yet." The students wear the signs around their necks for three days, can't talk to other students and must eat lunch alone."

I'm not as opposed to this as some are, but I can appreciate how tough it is to contemplate.

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College Dwellers Outnumber the Imprisoned New York Times
In a reversal from 2000, more Americans over all now live in college dormitories than in prisons.

School crimes under wraps Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Some serious crimes reported in the Seattle's public schools last school year -- including cases of assaults and strong-arm robberies -- weren't reported to police, the P-I has found.

Few Students Switching Schools Under 'No Child' Law Washington Post
This fall, about 170 Northern Virginia children left elementary schools that fell short of academic goals for schools with better math and reading test scores. Most of their classmates stayed put.

For Shanker, education was a labor union of love USA Today
Albert Shanker organized his first labor strike in 1945 at age 17, when he rallied his fellow New York City bike messengers for a $1-a-week raise.

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UPDATE: The permanent replacement for Paley was just announced today, I'm told, a Fairfax County reporter named Maria Glod. Check out her past work here. I'll try and dig up a picture.

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Over at the Education Writers blog, USA Today's Richard Whitmire reminds us that universal preschool might end up being just as "big" an education issue as NCLB (Will preschool outpull NCLB?). It's not that UPK is being ignored by the candidates -- HRC and Edwards both have preschool plans -- but, as Whitmire points out, the press still hasn't caught on. In part, I'd argue, because preschool issues include a whole set of other players and dynamics that most K-12 folks (reporters included) don't know much about.

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Lost in the hubbub surrounding the release and interpretation of this year's NAEP scores (yawn) is a fascinating and powerful story in the Chicago Tribune about what happens when researchers analyze another kind of performance -- suspension rates -- by race and poverty groups.

The fact that black kids --especially boys -- are disproportionately affected is vivid but not surprising. (Even though the suspension rates are double and even triple what they should be.) The fact that black middle class kids are suspended at higher rates, too, is a little more eye-opening. (Black students are no more likely to misbehave than other students from the same SES background.) And the reactions of schools with these different outcomes is perhaps the most interesting of all. (Many defend the differences because they are applying a uniform discipline standard.)

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'Nation's Report Card' Shows Improvement Wash Post
The nation's fourth- and eighth-graders continue to improve steadily in mathematics, and fourth-grade reading achievement is on the rise, according to test scores released yesterday.

NAEP Reading and Math Scores Rise EdWeek
The gains continued an overall upward trend in math scores that dates to the early 1990s, while reading scores have been more stagnant.

US students score sweeping gains on tests CSM
Elementary and middle-school students are making significant improvements in math skills, while their gains in reading are more modest, according to national test results.

Schoolkids Post Modest Gains Wall Street Journal
US schoolchildren won higher marks on a national report card, intensifying the battle over the renewal of NCLB.

Grade-schoolers raise math, reading scores USA Today
When it comes to math and reading skills, new test results show the USA's youngsters are improving steadily but slowly.

Math Scores Rise, but Reading Is Mixed NYT
The results also showed that the nation had made only incremental progress in narrowing historic gaps in achievement between white and minority students.

U.S. Test Results Show Growth in Math, Not Reading NPR
The Education Department's highly anticipated national test scores for 4th- and 8th-graders show modest improvements in math, but flat scores in reading.

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The run of major newspaper editorial pages supporting the current NCLB over some of the proposed fixes has been a surprisingly long and consistent one, including most recently the Christian Science Monitor (Let NCLB do its work), and the Chicago Tribune (The next NCLB). Of course, dry editorials aren't going to make much difference to the process, which as I've pointed out is in a particularly political phase right now. But who knew that NCLB was so popular among editorial page writers?

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MacArthur Foundation awards 24 grants Associated Press
A woman who helps students go to college with their "posse," a psychiatrist who treats combat veterans and a museum director on Alaska's Kodiak Island are among the 24 winners of this year's MacArthur Foundation "genius grants."

Schools still rise close to freeways LA Times
L.A. Unified continues to build near roads that spew pollution despite a state law and evidence of health hazards.

Buy a Laptop for a Child, Get Another Laptop Free NYT
One Laptop Per Child, an ambitious project to bring computing to the developing world’s children, is reaching out to the public through an interesting marketing campaign. PLUS: Still Waiting for That $100 Laptop?

In growing cities, a loss of students Christian Science Monitor
Public school officials in several districts in Arizona, California, and Texas – particularly those with a high share of Hispanic students – are seeing a drop in enrollment this school year over last, and many are at a loss to explain it.

Posted by Alexander Russo at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Everyone says they know how to fix NCLB -- what should be done -- but no one seems to know how to get the politics right to get there. Former New York City education guy Robert Gordon's piece in Slate does much the same, unfortunately. Titled with supreme confidence (How to fix the No Child Left Behind Act), the Gordon piece rehashes the obstacles we all know about and then proposes -- yes -- national standards as a solution. Politically speaking, NCLB proponents need to do something along these lines: buy off the teachers by softening the mandatory merit pay language, win back the testing hawks by dumping local assessments, and make the multiple measures language tight enough that Spellings and the business groups can live with it. Give it a new name, let everyone say that it's not NCLB anymore, and declare victory. Pretty? No. Perfect? No. But that's not what this is really all about. Via Eduwonk.

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"While the merits of banning goodie bags filled with Reese’s and Skittles seem obvious — especially at a time when the risk of childhood diabetes is high for American children — many parents draw the line at cupcakes."

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Though I'm more familiar with the Chicago story than Philly, I tend to agree with Dana Goldstein's assessment of the NYT story on Paul Vallas (Can Urban Schools Be "Tamed"?) that Vallas' record is mixed in previous districts and that the notion that superstar superintendents can transform districts is a misleading one. They can bring energy and get things organized, to be sure. (Vallas did the textbooks in the warehouse thing in 1995, and DC's Michelle Rhee did the same bit last week.) But they can't always make things change in the classroom, and often get pulled in so many directions and start so many programs that it all gets watered down over time.

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If anything is certain, it's that NCLB will get a new name when it's reauthorized points out this Washington Post article. It's been that way in the past, and will all but certainly happen again due to the law and President Bush's current unpopularity (Education Law Could Leave Behind Its Name). Check out some of the names that are being proposed -- it's easier to make fun the current name than make up a catchy new one.

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Many may have missed the EIA Communique's analysis of the internal politics surrounding NCLB reauthorization, which came out late last week (EIA Communique). Others may have better explanations (EIA is a union critic), but this one describes some of the history behind the TEACH Act, suggesting that Miller should have known that it would be a problem, reminds us that Miller and the NEA went at it "hammer and tongs" in the runup to NCLB 1.0, and reminds us that the CTA and NEA aren't always on the same page. Most important, it reminds us of the internal dynamics going on within the union (any union) that require rallying the troops on broad issues but holding a smaller set of issues as key "gets."

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Joe Williams notes that another couple of editorial boards (the Detroit News and Chicago Tribune) have joined the rest in denouncing teacher- and school board-led efforts to bring in multiple measures and local assessments (here). Meanwhile, the AFTies seem to be focusing on the pay for performance issue, not the rest of the bill, which seems relatively reasonable whether you agree with them or not. I still don't know if there's any space between them and the NEA on this, but I'm hoping there might be.

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Education and Schools Are a Focus for Edwards NYT
John Edwards laid out a proposal to overhaul the education system on Friday, saying that poor children attend schools that are “separate and unequal.”

New York Just Says No to Abstinence Funding NYT
The decision puts New York in line with at least 10 other states that have decided to forgo the federal money in recent years.

School options urged for parents Washington Times
Top federal education officials have released a new handbook urging state and local administrators to explain more effectively to parents that they can transfer their children among schools or access free tutoring services if their child's school is consistently subpar.

Fresh Faces Tackle Woes in New Orleans Schools NYT
A new superintendent is vowing to transform the battered public school system in New Orleans.

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Big Story Of The Week
How Al Shanker Blew Up NCLB

Campaign 2008
Education Staffers, Democratic Presidential Campaigns
Will Not Fixing NCLB Help Dems Win The White House? No.
Spotted: Clinton Cruising For An Endorsement?

On The Hill
The "Testing Hawks" Vs. Union "Special Interests"

NCLB News
California Teachers Go After Pelosi On NCLB

Urban Ed
Green Dot Goes National, Maybe

Media Watch
New Schools Venture Fund Hires A "Journalist In Residence"

Teachers & Teaching
How Teachers Think

Foundation Follies
Where's The Children's Defense Fund On NCLB?

School Life
Unimaginative Administrators Ban Form Of Dancing They Banned Three Years Ago

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As September's End Nears, Legislative Action Awaits
It's looking as if Rep. Miller will miss his goal, and Sen. Kennedy still has a chance to meet his.

Edwards Promises NCLB Overhaul
John Edwards' presidential campaign said today that the former senator would "totally overhaul" NCLB.

On Senate Panel, a Different Dynamic for NCLB Renewal
Senator Edward M. Kennedy is hoping to get a bill reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act through Congress before the end of this year. But if that’s going to happen, he has some big stumbling blocks to overcome.

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If you see the kids in the hall doing some crazy thing with their hands covered in marker, they might not be flashing gang signs. The "Daft Hands" video on YouTube has been watched over 3 million times, and done "live" on the Ellen Degeneres show.

Check it out - you can be the first in your teacher's lounge / office / cubicle to master the whole thing.

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Teachers to Pelosi: Say no to 'No Child Left Behind SF Examiner
Leaders of the CTA brought a giant postcard signed by nearly 1,000 teachers to San Francisco today to urge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to withdraw her support of a proposed reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

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Thousands Protest in Support of Jena Six PBS
Thousands marched in Jena, La. Thursday to protest charges against six black students accused of beating a white classmate. PLUS: Segregation Growing in American Schools NPR.

Reading, writing, and rebellion Boston Globe
Jonathan Kozol appeared shrunken in his chair at Harvard's Memorial Church, his blazer tossed aside, the sleeves of his pinstriped shirt rolled up to the elbows to expose bony arms. His thin ankles, swathed in black socks, disappeared into his signature navy blue Keds.

U.S. Set to Offer Math Grants Modeled on Reading First Ed Week
Like Reading First, the math program requires the federal Department of Education to make competitive grants available to states, which can then make awards to school districts.

Judge OKs 'Hitler Youth' Buttons Washington Post
Two students in northern New Jersey can wear buttons featuring a picture of Hitler youth to protest a school uniform policy, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

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One of the most interesting of the 20-something mostly irate comments on my Huffington Post article claims that Shanker doesn't deserve credit for unionizing the teachers because David Selden was the true visionary and was replaced by Shanker in a power struggle along the lines of Stalin and Trotsky. Hmm. Guess I skipped that chapter in Kahlenberg's book.

Speaking of which, Kahlenberg says I got it wrong. He writes: "I don't agree that "few" of Shanker's ideas were adopted. Standards and charters were two big ideas he was very involved in pushing -- though I'd concede that neither worked out as he envisioned. The NBPTS is a pretty big idea that he promoted. Peer review exists in 30 districts -- not enough places, but enough to keep some pressure on. Entry level teacher tests are tougher than when he started. So I think it's a mixed and evolving legacy on ed reform...I think Al Shanker would have found a way to bridge the divide between the standards groups and teachers, which would have forced NEA to modify its positions."

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The mainstream news in Chicago is finally starting to pay formal attention to District 299, my group "watchdog" covering the Chicago Board of Education and its nefarious doings: Education bloggers keep careful eye on CPS. 

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After last Monday's success, The CTA is continuing its effort to make sure that the Miller NCLB draft is slowed down and/or modified substantially with an event in Northern California today (see details below). As before, I'm not sure just how coordinated this is with the national -- as happened with the Katrina vouchers, I'm told. Or perhaps they're playing good cop, bad cop. On strategy, I've noted before that Miller may have overplayed his hand by including TEACH. But it occurs to me also that the unions may have done the same by pushing to expand local assessments and multiple measures, which Miller included in his bill. There's some priority-setting here that I'm not sure makes sense.

Bay Area Teachers to Make ‘Special Delivery’

to Speaker Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco Thursday

to Protest Reauthorization Proposal for Federal

‘No Child Left Behind Act’

News Conference Includes Lawmakers, Labor Leaders and Giant

CTA Postcard Signed by 1,000 Educators from Across California

SAN FRANCISCO – Bay Area teachers, lawmakers and San Francisco labor leaders will join California Teachers Association Vice President Dean E. Vogel Thursday in presenting a giant CTA postcard signed by 1,000 public school educators to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to protest her support of unfair reauthorization proposals in the federal “No Child Left Behind Act.” They will also deliver a letter from state lawmakers who also oppose the harmful reauthorization language.

The garage door-sized postcard will form the backdrop of a news conference in front of the Federal Building in San Francisco, where Pelosi’s office is located, as part of the 340,000-member CTA’s new campaign urging Congress to vote no on proposed NCLB reauthorization changes. As one of the signers of the letter of opposition by State Senator Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, Senator Leland Yee, Ph.D., D-San Francisco/San Mateo, will outline why many Democrats in the state Legislature signed on to warn Pelosi about the new changes hurting students, teachers and schools by making a bad law worse.

Pelosi supports unfair changes in the reauthorization proposed by U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, that are the subject of fast-tracked hearings now in Congress. The changes would place even more undue emphasis on test scores, create new sanctions for struggling schools, make it harder to attract and retain teachers, undermine local control, and erode employee rights. Complete information about CTA’s NCLB campaign is available at www.cta.org/issues/esea/.

· WHAT: CTA Vice President Dean E. Vogel, Bay Area teachers, lawmakers and labor leaders to hold news conference protesting Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s support of proposed reauthorization changes in the federal “No Child Left Behind Act” that hurt students, educators and schools.

· WHEN: 10:30 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 20.

· WHERE: In front of Federal Building, 450 Golden Gate Ave., San Francisco, 94102.

· VISUALS: Giant postcard to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signed by 1,000 California teachers.

###

The 340,000-member California Teachers Association is affiliated with the 3.2 million-member National Education Association.

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Schools, colleges underreport crime Stateline.com
Schools and colleges across the country do not report crime and violent incidents on campus consistently or accurately. Via EdNews.org.

Parents seek ban for 7th grade book Chicago Tribune
Several dozen parents at a Southwest Side Chicago public school are calling for school officials to ban a controversial book they say is filled with references to sex and violence.

Alumna Gives $128 Million to High School NYT
Events originating in Warren E. Buffett’s rejection from Harvard Business School have led to a gift to a Quaker private school that dwarfs some college endowments.

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Click below to continue...or go here to read the full-length version from The Huffington Post.

Shanker, the charismatic former teachers union leader, is known to many for weekly paid columns in the New York Times (and The New Republic) and his embrace of innovative and controversial ideas (national standards, peer review of teachers, charter schools) that were outside the traditional purview of trade unions. Out this month, Shanker's much-deserved biography, Tough Liberal, helps make clear how he became the darling of so many lawmakers, journalists, and policy wonks - even conservative ones.

But few of Shanker's reform-minded ideas were ever adopted. Unionizing the nation's classroom teachers - directly through the AFT and indirectly through the NEA (which was forced to follow Shanker's lead) - is his main legacy. And, in going after popular and powerful members like Pelosi and Miller, the NEA and CTA are acting to protect teachers' interests just like Shanker did.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Millions of teachers and their families benefited, and many would argue that schoolchildren did as well. But union advocacy for teachers cuts both for teachers and against change, and regularly requires a show of strength.

During the 1960s and early 1970s, Shanker was so aggressive (and effective) in winning benefits for teachers – through citywide strikes and other actions – that he became the butt of a joke in Woody Allen's 1973 comedy, Sleeper. In the movie, we learn that, some 200 years into the future, civilization will be destroyed by a madman named Al Shanker who gets hold of a nuclear warhead.

In real life, of course, the fiery union leader didn't destroy civilization. He just organized the teachers. In so doing, however, Shanker may well have planted land mines in the path of school reform efforts that followed - including, for the time being at least, the renewal of No Child Left Behind.

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Here's my incomplete and completely unverified list of campaign education staffers for the top Dem. presidential candidates:

HRC: Catherine Brown (with Mildred Otero in the Senate office)
JRE: James Kvaal (from the Senate office)
Obama: Cassandra Butts (with Steve Robinson in the Senate office)

Thanks for any additions or corrections.

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Here's the video that everyone's watching, in which a confrontational student is eventually tasered by campus security after begging not to be:

You know you want to see it.

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"The story begins at an assembly last fall, when a black freshman asked if he was allowed to sit under a large tree on school grounds that he had heard was "whites-only." From The Nation, via School of Blog.

UPDATE: Presidential candidate Barack Obama is being called out for his mild response to the Jena students being arrested (Politico).

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Erik Robelen's piece in EdWeek on small schools research recaps and deepens what most of us realized a few years ago: converting big high schools into small ones without making them truly autonomous doesn't necessarily get you very much, and there are tremendous pressures against autonomy in that kind of setting. That's what the Gates folks learned the hard way. Etc. None of it worth noting except then it occurred to me that the highly-anticipated (though not quite done) breakup of Locke HS in LA into Green Dot schools is in many ways just the same thing, except that the small schools are going to be charters. Is that enough of a difference? The researcher I talked to yesterday said probably not. Have other places experimented with charter conversions? Not that I know of.

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Previous Klein-related posts here and here .

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Two schools of thought on ‘No Child' Politico
“We’re trying to ratchet up support and get other state associations to mobilize their constituents in the field. We are in attack mode.”

Learning from Long Beach schools Los Angeles Times
The city's school district is again recognized as among the nation's best. L.A. should take note.

Florida Teachers Slap 'F' on Bonus Pay Plan TheLedger.com
The Florida Legislature's new and improved teacher merit pay plan may have passed with grudging union support, but teachers still don't like it and some school districts have declined to participate, turning down millions of dollars in state bonus money.

Student arrested, Tasered at Kerry event AP
Video of police Tasering a persistent questioner of Sen. John Kerry became an Internet and TV sensation Tuesday, generating fierce debate about free speech and the motives of the college student involved -- a known prankster who often posts practical jokes online.

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Having successfully fixed our nation's campaign finance system, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) is rolling up his sleeves to help fix NCLB. Thanks, Russ. I'm sure the committee staff appreciate your jumping in like this. Not that I was ever particularly nice to committee staff myself. Yes, of course, they should have taken your language into their bill. Every Senator's prerogative, etc.

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Former Miller staffer Charlie Barone weighed in a few days ago with an optimistic-sounding post on the DFER blog about how -- despite the flaws in Spellings' implementation of NCLB and Miller's draft proposal -- the two might rise above the fray (or just plow through it) in order to get some good things done as they had in the past (Special guest blogger).

I hope he's right. But, based on current events and my own small understanding of what it's like to work with the teachers, I'm not feeling so hopeful right now. First off, there's a long history of teachers (esp the NEA) fighting with Miller despite his deep support for their work -- on EdFlex, on class size reduction during the Clinton administration, and on NCLB's infamous HQT provisions, and now on the TEACH Act. When it gets down to it, even the AFTies are pretty hard core (AFT Michele the other day wrote "what's good for teachers is good for children"). Meantime, the teachers in LA are threatening to block the transformation of Locke high school into small union charter schools, despite strong support within the Locke faculty and a vote of the elected school board approving the change earlier this month.

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Kozol holds fast to 'No Child' protest USA Today
The former teacher and author of books such as Savage Inequalities says he has lost 29 pounds on a mostly liquid diet.

As Duties Grow, Principals Face Mounting Pressures NPR
Faced with a principal shortage, many districts are creating mentoring programs to train their own talent, but the programs are showing mixed results.

Reading, Writing and Internet Safety NPR
Virginia is the first state to require public schools to teach Internet safety.

Hooked on mnemonics Christian Science Monitor
How I "learned" Spanish in a weekend by free association.

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"Super-blogger Alexander Russo is jealous that he sold his independence for a paycheck and is now under Edweek's corporate jackboot," writes D-Ed Reckong in this update, apparently having mistaken my compliment for an insult. I actually like how harsh his blog posts are sometimes -- they're bracing and contrarian. Of course, the idea of George Miller being a "whiny bitch" is funny, considering how big and bruising the guy is. And the the idea of my being under EdWeek's "corporate jackboot" would be of concern if it weren't also sort of funny. Have you met those guys, Kevin? They're all in Tevas and Crocs. So stop being a whiny bitch and get back to tearing apart bad research. I'll try and do the same.

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Good vs. evil is rarely all that interesting, which is why internal conflicts -- the nemesis in the other cubicle, "frenemies" and underminers, siblings, hipsters vs. yuppies, Jon Stewart vs. Stephen Colbert -- are so much more fun to watch. Nearly everyone has a nemesis -- whether he or she realizes (or admits) it or not. Usually it's someone nearby.

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No Child Left Alone Weekly Standard
Reformers are busy people, tireless people, whose displeasure with the world as it is inspires them to improve the lives of their fellow human beings no matter what, and they get cranky when you bring up the law of unintended consequences.

No Child Left Behind needs lift, not a recess Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Among the worst ideas: Basing accountability decisions on test scores in subjects other than math and reading. Proponents presented studies that show schools have increased the time in math and reading to the detriment of other disciplines, such as science and social studies.

Revisiting the Canon Wars NYT
Two decades after Allan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind,” it’s generally agreed that his multiculturalist opponents won the canon wars.

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Alabama Plan Brings Out Cry of Resegregation NYT
fter white parents in this racially mixed city complained about school overcrowding, school authorities set out to draw up a sweeping rezoning plan. The results: all but a handful of the hundreds of students required to move this fall were black — and many were sent to virtually all-black, low-performing schools.

Rookie Chicago Principal Faces Early Challenges NPR
Like Chicago, many other school systems across the country are facing the same turnover, as baby boomer principals near retirement age. And for the rookie principals, challenges come early and often.

Raising the Scores: For a School, Hope and a Fresh Start NYT
With the support of the teachers union, Newton replaced 6 of its 44 teachers — some against their will — with teachers who demonstrated a higher commitment to change or who had expertise needed in a particular subject.

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Campaign 2008
Educating Elected Officials Through Their Pocketbooks
Richardson Slammed For Misrepresenting US Achievement
The Great Presidential Mashup "Cheat Sheet"

Bush Administration
Spellings Playing For A Stalemate?
Neil Bush's School Scam: The "Other" USDE Scandal
Kanye West Song Might Make Good Anthem For Ed In '08

NCLB News
How The NEA Ended Up So Opposed To Miller/McKeon
All Children Shall Be Proficient By, Well, Whenever
"No Able-Bodied Student Left Behind"

Teachers & Teaching
Short Boys Underestimated By Teachers
Teachers With Richer Kids Earn More Under Performance Pay
Mahatma Kozol

Foundation Follies
George Miller Needs New Friends...Like The Ed Sector
Real [Education] World, DC
Lang In For Schaffer At PEN

On The Hill
Having Done So Well On The War, Dems Turn To Domestic Issues
Why Did Miller Include Merit Pay In His Draft?
Are Unions Over-Reacting, Or Does Miller Proposal Over-Reach?

Media Watch
EdWeek.org Nominated For Online Journalism Award
The Hoff Loves All His Sources Equally
Secretary Right & The Hoff

Best Of The Blogs
Wait, Didn't I Read About That Somewhere Else?
Blogger Calls Out House Education Chair
Don't Name Your Blogs Like I Have

School Life
Colbert Can't Shake Klein On Paying Kids For Grades
Principal Bans Reporter, Then Apologizes
Lazy Teacher Meant To Show Star Wars, Showed Porn Instead

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If you're not already sick of the NEA-Miller story, there's a new Klein-Hoff EdWeek piece up online today that fleshes out some of the events of the past week. Included are not only the whole he-said, she-said about the TEACH Act language that you probably already know, but also some interesting tidbits like how the NEA made sure to have folks from each of the House ed committee members' districts at the Monday hearing, the toe-the-NEA-line responses of some Dem House members about the issue.

That leaves two questions: Why did Miller include the merit stuff in the first place, and what's going on between the NEA and CTA? I don't know if Miller had to include the merit pay stuff to have any chance of McKeon's support, or for other reasons. But fighting the merit pay thing and revamping the AYP system at the same time (and comparability) continues to seem to me to be biting off more than necessary. Or I'm missing something -- Miller puts in the merit pay stuff just to give something for the NEA folks to focus on, hoping to preserve the standards and accountability provisions. Let me know if you've got it figured out.

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Once again, Kevin DeRosa at D-Ed Reckoning outdoes my in the nasty negative category, calling the House education chairman a "whiny bitch". Basically, he doesn't like Miller's draft, and thinks Miller is carping too much about Spellings' disapproval. And you thought that I was bad.

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I was supposed to show you the Kanye West's Ed In '08 promo, which apparently is getting lots of YouTube attention, but was so bored and disappointed by the spot -- perfunctory, obvious, unimaginably forgettable -- that I needed a jolt of West's live performance at the VMA of his new song, Stronger -- whose opening chorus (see below) might actually be a good anthem for Ed In '08.

N-n-now th-that that don't kill me, can only make me stronger.
I need you to hurry up now, cuz I can't wait much longer.
I know I got to be right now, I can't get much stronger (wronger?)
Man I been waiting all night now, that's how long I been on you.
I need ya right now. I need ya right now

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No Gifted Child Left Behind? Time
Nearly half of lower-income students in the top tier in reading fall out of it by fifth grade.

Thompson: Leave No Child Left Behind behind Baltimore Sun
Today, Fred Thompson, the former senator from Tennessee and television and film star who has entered the campaign for the Republican Party presidential nomination in 2008, suggested that it's time to leave No Child Left Behind behind.

Early-Education Advocates Face Tougher Sell EdWeek
Early education conference provided an opportunity for advocates to push preschool as an economic investment.

Austin moves forward with teacher performance pay plan Austin American-Statesman
Nine schools selected to be in pilot group this year. Via EdNews.org.

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Seething with indignation (if, as usual, not entirely making sense), here's what Andywonk has to say about his love of Hoff, my loose grasp of time and space, etc: Hoff, Russo, & Interns.

Then, in practically his next breath, Andy swoops in with a late, long, and obvious post about the NEA and Miller. Oy. Who's paying for him to do this, again?

UPDATE: Andy takes note of this post but doesn't seem to recognize that the "I must be right" bit (above) is a lampoon of his always-rightness, not a tantrum on my part. You got that, I know, but I'm adding brackets and quotation marks to help out the others.

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Previous posts: An "Emily's List" For Education?

(PLEASE FORWARD FAR AND WIDE TO ANYONE WHO CARES US MUCH AS WE DO ABOUT MEANINGFUL EDUCATION REFORM!)

Dear friend:

I’m very worried.

In 2001, Congress (with help from Rep. George Miller and Sen. Ted Kennedy – both Democrats) took unprecedented steps toward infusing long-missing accountability into federal education policy. After pumping billions of Title I dollars from Washington to local districts each year, Congress for the first time required schools to show that students were actually benefiting (i.e. learning) from the federal funding. Even more, the No Child Left Behind Act went out of its way to make sure that schools and districts would not be able to hide poor performance by minority or disabled students by touting school wide or system wide student performance in the aggregate.

It is not an overstatement to suggest that the bi-partisan passage of NCLB was one of the most significant and sweeping federal education policy shifts in a generation. Even back when Congress was reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (which eventually became NCLB in its modern form), a frustrated New York Senator Robert Kennedy bemoaned the fact that we were setting up the federal program as a costly failure. “What happened to the children,” Kennedy asked during one of the hearings at the time. “Do you mean you spent a billion dollars and you don’t know whether they can read or not?”

The dollar amounts increased dramatically over the years, but the structural problems in the law didn’t go away – nor did the shameful achievement gap between black and Hispanic students and their white counterparts. The longer the federal programs were in place, the harder it became to get the education establishment to support making any changes at all that would jeopardize funding.

When Miller and Kennedy teamed up with the Bush administration to pass NCLB in 2001, it marked a historic victory for those who championed the academic needs of kids who had routinely slipped through the cracks. As NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein told his principals a few years ago: “Whatever else you may say about No Child Left Behind, it is forcing us to come to grips with a moral imperative that many of us might prefer to ignore: that we have a collective responsibility for the education of over 1 million children.”

You may have seen the news stories in the last few days about what is happening to NCLB. A process which began as a way to address widely-acknowledged shortcomings in the law (and to add long-overdue incentives to reward our nation’s most successful teachers and make sure that every child has an equal chance to be taught by an effective teacher) has morphed into an attempt by the powerful National Education Association to turn back the clock to the days when meaningful accountability was virtually nonexistent.

The Washington Post and New York Times editorial boards, among many others, have called out the NEA on its attempts to gut the law. But the political heat that is building to weaken the most important aspects of NCLB is very real. Democrats like George Miller and Speaker Nancy Pelosi are under tremendous pressure to come through with a victory for the adults who work in schools - in this case, at the expense of the children who deserve our full attention.

At this week’s committee hearings on NCLB, the NEA was out in full force with union leaders who were flown in from all over the country to lobby elected officials from their districts. They aren’t afraid to issue threats to Democrats when they feel it suits their needs. They are organized and they are effective. But they are also on the wrong side of this one.

Democrats in Congress have already proven that they are willing to take hits on NCLB when it means standing up for the millions of students whose academic performance will no longer be swept under the rug. But it is far from certain they will continue to hold the line, considering the fact that Miller and Pelosi are now being personally targeted by the NEA for their work on NCLB to date.

Our organization, Democrats for Education Reform, exists to provide political cover for elected officials who want to make progress and do the right thing for kids. We have big plans about working with Democrats who “get it” from coast to coast.

But the current NCLB reauthorization demands our collective attention NOW. We have been working with civil rights groups and non-partisan education reform groups to support meaningful changes to NCLB that preserve the hard-fought accountability mechanisms. We are fighting to ensure that no child is denied an opportunity to make something of his or her life because they are unlucky enough to be assigned to a substandard school.

But we very much need your help with this one, because the other side is mighty, committed, and angry.

How can you help? There are a number of ways:

1. Support our efforts to fight this battle in the coming weeks by contributing to our federal political action committee. For better or for worse, it costs money to fight these kinds of fights, especially when we’re up against an entire industry with millions at their disposal. You can contribute with a credit card at http://www.dfer.org/contribute/, or you can mail it to the address on our website. Your contributions will allow us to support a combined earned/paid media campaign, and to support politicians in Washington who will fight the good fight in the coming weeks.

2. Sign on to our Democrats for Education Reform “Statement of Principles” so that we can show our Democratic friends there is support for holding the line on accountability. You can use our online petition at http://www.dfer.org/petition/ After you sign on, continue to check for NCLB developments on the blog we have on our website.

3. Volunteer to help support the campaigns of politicians who will do the right thing. (Call me at 646-354-9625.)

4. Forward this request to anyone you know who feels as strongly about this as we do. Hell, forward it to people who feel HALF as strongly as we do.

This is a fight that CAN be won, but we need to move quickly. I hope you will join us in this crucial effort.

Sincerely,

Joe Williams

Executive Director

Democrats for Education Reform

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'Students First In Line' Program To Offer Job Training At Needy Schools
Stolen from Alan Gottlieb's Schools For Tomorrow blog.

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Here's how things unfolded, best as I can figure out:

For the first few days of last week everybody said that they hadn't read enough of the details to respond (see EdWeek story here).

Even on Friday, Andy's beloved David Hoff quoted NEA chief Reg Weaver as supporting key elements of the teacher quality proposal (which they later recanted).

A Wednesday September 5 letter from the NEA to the Committee included both lots of complaints and lots of praise for the draft (here), granted for only Title I. However, no one reported on this letter, which would have been key.

In the meantime, USA Today, the Washington Post, and the NYT editorial pages had all expressed concern that the Miller draft was giving too much away to the suburban-dominated union.

Only on Monday -- when Weaver's testimony was released (PDF here) and Miller and Weaver got into it was it -- fully clear that the NEA wanted both a softer AYP system (which they'd gotten) and softer teacher quality standards (which they hadn't), and that their California brethren were jumping in (as they have in the past) with both feet.

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On education, Giuliani has a troubling record LA Times
When he campaigned for mayor, he vowed to fix the schools, cut crime and boost the economy. Today, the city is safer and has more jobs. But New York City schools remain troubled.

Utah May Swap Standardized Tests for Online Exams Salt Lake Tribune
In place of the old tests, she and the K-16 Alliance would like to see students in grades two through 12 take adaptive, online tests at least three times a year. She said the tests could possibly become part of the U-PASS system the state uses to gauge schools' academic progress.

Girls here, boys there Cincinnati Enquirer
A year after new federal rules made it easier for schools to segregate classrooms by gender, the trend is exploding nationwide, but schools now realize that it's a tough change to sustain. Via EdNews.org.

Md. Exit Exams Will Be Multiple Choice Only Washington Post
State plans to eliminate written-response questions from its high school exit exams to address long-standing complaints about how slowly test results are processed.

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While it's easy to look at this week's NCLB meltdown as the result of teachers union recalcitrance, Bess Keller's piece on the comparability provision (Proposed NCLB Rule on 'Salary Comparability' Draws Scrutiny) raises the possibility that the Miller draft, on the whole, tries to do too much -- not just fixing NCLB's flaws but carving out new ground that is especially difficult to reach under the current circumstances.

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"With every passing week, the 110th Congress looks less likely to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the fate of which will therefore hinge on the 2008 election," begins this NRO commentary (No Question Left Behind). "So long as these monster questions lack agreed-upon answers, I don’t see much hope for an NCLB consensus, and I don’t see much hope for NCLB 2.0 anytime soon."

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It sounds like the intro to an MTV reality show: "Eight young people leave the classroom, come to Washington, D.C., and are immersed in the world of education policy." But no, it's actually a program run by the folks at Fordham. And, of course, it has its own blog (here).

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NCLB fails our schools USA Today
Bill Richardson: A one-point plan for No Child Left Behind: Scrap it.

Teachers attack education lawSan Mateo Times
The state's largest teachers' union on Monday launched a campaign decrying the 5-year-old No Child Left Behind Act as a failure and criticizing a proposal to renew the plan as only making the situation worse.

What's Good for Children NYT
With Congress gearing up to reauthorize the act, business leaders are rightly raising their voices in an attempt to prevent the teachers’ unions and their political allies from weakening this important law

No Race Left Behind NRO
One part of [the law] has generated surprisingly little debate, but ought to — namely the law’s requirement that schools track the scores of racial subgroups of students, and that each group hit the target pass rate on the tests.

Education Reform Goes From Bad to Worse Conservative Voice
Miller’s proposed changes to No Child Left Behind gut its school-choice provisions.

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I don't think that any of the candidates have said anything noteworthy on education -- or that anything they say about the issue before the primaries are done with should be believed -- but maybe you want to know for yourself. Fine. Yesterday, I showed you the Washington Post "issue tracker." Today's it's the Slate/ Yahoo!/ Huffington Post overview of what each of the candidates have said on education, in preparation for tomorrow's, er, debate.

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Having failed to make the school transfer provision a high-profile issue and feeling shut out of the reauthorization process, author and advocate Jonathan Kozol (whose book Shame Of A Nation was a big seller last year) has now resorted to a partial fast in protest of the law. Read all about it on the Huffington Post (Why I am Fasting: An Explanation to My Friends).

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Teachers and Rights Groups Oppose Education Measure NYT
A draft House bill to renew the federal No Child Left Behind law came under sharp attack from civil rights groups and the nation’s largest teacher unions.

PLUS: NCLB Reauthorization now a "war" DFER

States Move Toward Closer Scrutiny of Preschools EdWeek
States move forward on efforts to certify early-childhood programs according to how well graduates perform in kindergarten.

Male teacher ranks at 40-year low Newsweek
Stereotyping, low pay, lack of role models. Why the number of men teaching in schools is at a 40-year low.

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"Teachers at predominantly white and affluent schools were twice as likely to get a bonus as teachers from schools that are predominantly black and poor," based on this Orlando Sentinel story (Merit pay for teachers reveals sway of affluence). "It wasn't supposed to work that way." Via a friend.

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Read all the way to the end of this NPR piece (Hill Panel Ponders Future of NCLB) and you'll see first word I've heard of that Spellings is saying she'd rather have the current NCLB than the Miller draft. Saber-rattling? Maybe. But for those who are most worried about multiple measures and all the rest, it's going to be a serious consideration.

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A hearty thanks to Sherman Dorn for bringing a little humor to a dreary Monday morning. My favorites:

1. It was the best of laws, it was the worst of laws.
2. All happy reforms are alike; each unhappy reform is unhappy in its own way.
6. It was a dark and stormy reauthorization.

My nomination: "As George Miller awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed... into a gigantic standardized test." Dorn welcomes additional nominations. Go here for some ideas.

Or, if you have to, you can listen in/watch the hearing here.

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Still not really ready for any real work today? I'm with you. Check out this fun little tool from the Washington Post folks, which lets you see who's doing or saying what on education (and other issues), or at least who's being talked about in relation to the issue. Last I checked, Obama had 12 education-related mentions, with Hillary just behind him. "The issue tracker includes information from the Web sites of a wide variety of sources across the political spectrum. Sources include news organizations, political parties, interest groups, bloggers, unions, trade organizations, candidates, activists, and more."

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New York City isn't the only place where it's hard to get into a "good" kindergarten, but it's perhaps the most dramatic example of the phenomenon. Watch tonight on TLC (7pm Eastern) as three very different sets of parents try and figure out what's best for their kids and how the process works. Who knew that the nursery school directors were so important?

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Save School Standards Washington Post (editorial)
Does this country want to make schools better -- or just make schools look better?

Schools Under Scrutiny Over Cheating NYT
At a time when the pressure to do well on standardized tests in public schools creates incentives to cheat, states are just beginning to look for the patterns that betray it.

Love for city schools New York Daily News
A survey of nearly 600,000 parents, teachers and students in city schools yielded some surprising results - about 90% of parents are happy with their kid's teacher, and only 1% want less test prep.

Rewriting History Textbooks Post-Sept. 11 NPR
Think back to those days in middle school: European and American history held sway, while the Middle East got no more than a mention. But the events of Sept. 11 changed all that.

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UPDATE: From Mike Antonucci: "EIA has the exclusive tip that "Sammy the Bull" Gravano will be called in as a surprise witness. Gravano will reveal that "multiple measures" and "growth models" are mobspeak for racketeering of Title I funds."

Big Picture Panel (10:30 – 11:15)

Hold for Teacher

Kathleen Rooker

Principal, Neil Armstrong Elementary School

Port Charlotte, Florida

John Podesta

President and Chief Executive Officer

Center for American Progress

Linda Darling-Hammond

Professor of Education

Stanford University

Jack Jennings

President

Center on Education Policy

Andrea Messina

Commissioner

Aspen Institute Commission on No Child Left Behind

Kevin Carey

Research and Policy Manager

Education Sector

High School Reform & College and Career-Readiness Panel (11:15 – 12:00)

Billy Cannaday

Superintendent of Public Instruction

Commonwealth of Virginia

Bob Wise

President

Alliance for Excellent Education

Adria Steinberg

Associate Vice President of Youth Transition

Jobs for the Future

James McPartland

Principal Research Scientist, Center for Social Organization of Schools

Johns Hopkins University

Janet Bray

Director

Association Career Technical Education

Mike Cohen

President

ACHIEVE

Brian Gong

Executive Director

Center for Assessment

Civil Rights Panel (12:00– 12:45)

Nancy Zirkin

Vice President and Director of Public Policy

Leadership Conference on Civil Rights

Peter Zamora

Regional Counsel

Mexican American Legal Defense Fund

Dan Losen

Senior Education Law and Policy Associate

The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles

Stephanie Jones

Executive Director

The National Urban League

Delia Pompa

Vice President of Education Programs

National Council of La Raza

Dianne Piche

Executive Director

Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights

Myrna Mandlawitz

Policy Director

Learning Disabilities Association of America

Katie Neas

Director of Congressional Relations, Easter Seals

The Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities

Foundations, Businesses and Innovation Panel (12:45 – 1:30)

Charles Harris

Co-Founder and Executive Partner

SeaChange Capital Partners

Josh Wyner

Executive Vice President

Jack Kent Cooke Foundation

Frances Bryant Bradburn

Director of Instructional Technologies

North Carolina Department of Public Instruction

Nelson Smith

President

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools

Jim Kohlmoos

President and CEO

Knowledge Alliance

Sonia Hernandez Rodriguez

Executive Vice President

National Farm Workers Service Center

John Castellani

President

Business Roundtable

Teaching and School Leadership Panel (1:30 – 2:15)

Jon Schnur

CEO

New Leaders for New Schools

Barry Stark

Principal, Norris Middle School

Firth, Nebraska

Mary Kay Sommers

Principal, Shepardson Elementary, Fort Collins, Colorado

President, National Association of Elementary School Principals

Reg Weaver

President

National Education Association

Antonia Cortese

Executive Vice-President

American Federation of Teachers

Kristan Van Hook

Senior Vice President, Public Policy and Development

National Institute for Excellence in Teaching

Kati Haycock

President

Education Trust

State and Local Administrators Panel (2:15 – 3:00)

Mike Petrilli

Vice President for National Programs & Policy

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation

David Brewer

Superintendent of Schools

Los Angeles Unified School District

LaRuth Gray

Deputy Director

Metropolitan Center for Urban Education

Michael Casserly

Executive Director

Council of the Great City Schools

Joan Wodiska

Director of Education Policy

National Governors’ Association

Paul Houston

Executive Director

American Association of School Administrators

Michael Resnick

Associate Executive Director

National School Boards Association

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Campaign 2008
Democrats For Education Reform -- An "Emily's List" For Education?

NCLB 2.0
Editorial Responses Criticize Miller Draft
New NCLB Bill "Isn't Wonkery," Says Chairman Miller; Criticisms Are "Hokum"
Handy-Dandy NCLB Reauthorization Resources
Spellings Letter; Teacher Quality Draft Later Today

Bush Administration
Can Spellings Stay Focused?
Spellings Urged Early Rumsfeld Firing, Book Says

Teachers & Teaching
Walkthroughs Finished? Learning Objectives Posted?
NCLB, Like Shanker, Stronger On Standards Than Teacher Quality
What Next For Teacher Quality?

Media Watch
"This American Life" Does Foster Care
Magazines Lag Behind Papers On Web, Despite Increased Use Of Blogs
Individual School Profiles & Discussions Coming To Newspaper Websites
Rounding Up The Education Titles

Urban Education
Contrasting Views Of New Orleans
Restructuring Works In Chicago...But Teachers Pay The Price

School Life
First Days Of School For Angelina Jolie's Little Boy
Death Rates, Uniforms, Paying Kids, & Donated Hair
Objectifying Teachers

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Following up on Amy Waldman's excellent look at New Orleans schools (School Reform Hurricane), here are two contrasting views of how things are shaping up this fall:

History and Ideology Gang Up in New Orleans Dissent
New Orleans now has three “systems”: NOPS, with a handful of previously pretty good schools still functioning reasonably well; RSD, with approximately twenty schools, mostly in distress, educating about a third of the city’s public school students (and planning to open another six to ten campuses next year using modular buildings supplied by the private sector); and thirty-one charter schools.

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More interested in what happens next on the teacher quality front? Check out the latest discussion draft from the Miller camp, which includes Title II and all the rest:

I can't wait to hear what you think.

UPDATE: That didn't take long. EdWeek summarizes here ("The draft proposal also would keep intact most of the current NCLB law’s reporting requirements on whether teachers are “highly qualified” and add new requirements that states identify the districts and schools most in need of highly qualified teachers."). The Ed Trust crows below ("The provisions of the Title II discussion draft released yesterday by the Education and Labor Committee are a critical step forward for teaching and learning in classrooms throughout the country, especially the classrooms of low-income and minority students.")

Ed Trust:

Education Trust Statement on House No Child Left Behind Reauthorization Draft of Title II

The provisions of the Title II discussion draft released yesterday by the Education and Labor Committee are a critical step forward for teaching and learning in classrooms throughout the country, especially the classrooms of low-income and minority students.

“This draft is crystal clear in its insistence that poor kids and kids of color get what they most need in order to achieve at high levels – their fair share of strong teachers,” said Amy Wilkins of The Education Trust. “Title II, along with the comparability proposals in last week's Title I draft, is a declaration that the needs of kids must come first when it comes to how we staff our schools.”

The draft dramatically recasts Title II, melding demands for systemic change in teacher assignment patterns with rich incentives to encourage our best teachers to take on the most challenging assignments. Under these provisions, teachers doing the hard work of boosting student achievement under tough circumstances would have their extra efforts acknowledged and their successes rewarded.

“The staff draft has recognized that teachers who succeed in extraordinary circumstances deserve more than ordinary compensation,” said Wilkins. “For far too long, we’ve tried to achieve equity and close gaps on the backs of saints. That’s not fair to these teachers, and it won’t work for kids.”

In addition to focusing on performance pay, the draft puts forth proposals for making teaching assignments more attractive at hard-to-staff schools.

Our nation's most valuable educational resource is our teachers, and we can’t close the achievement gap without closing the gap in teacher talent,” said Wilkins. “Having said that, the draft recognizes that we can’t force teachers to go to schools where they don’t want to teach. By investing in our high-needs schools, we can create conditions in which our very best teachers will actually want to work.”

As important and positive as the draft is, one issue still needs attention. The bill should provide a clear funding formula so that the neediest schools get the most help. While Title II funds are now targeted so that high-poverty school districts benefit most, current law fails to ensure that the poorest schools within those districts get the support they need. In November 2005, a Congressionally-requested audit by the Government Accountability Office found that Title II was being spread too thinly across whole districts without any focus on the schools or teachers most in need of help. This targeting is critical to ensuring that the rest of the proposals have their intended effect, so we're confident that these provisions will be strengthened in the final bill.

To both raise achievement and close gaps, we need aggressive efforts to increase teacher quality nationwide while simultaneously eliminating the inequities of teacher talent distribution. This draft is a roadmap for that action, making Title II the powerful tool for equity that Congress intended it to be, and that students need it to be.

Posted by Alexander Russo at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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More Youth Die In Chicago Than Anywhere Else Chicago Reporter
Between 2000 and 2005, the Chicago Police Department reported 375 murders or manslaughters of people younger than 18–more than any other police department in America.

School District Has Dress Code, and Is Buying the Uniforms, Too NYT
Many public schools are supplying their students with an ever-growing list of essentials that go far beyond textbooks. Now they are dressing them, too.

Don't pay kids for good grades Christian Science Monitor
If we give our children $10 for an A, what's next - an iPod for every goal they score in soccer?

Lather, Rinse, Donate NYT
One of the most popular ways young people are contributing to charity these days is growing their hair long and donating it for wigs. But a lot of that hair is unusable.

Posted by Alexander Russo at 9:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It might not make much of a difference to Congressman Miller's political calculations, but today's slew of editorial responses to the discussion draft skew against him:

Our view on education: Five ways to improve NCLB USA Today
The appropriate response, however, isn't to scrap the whole act or to water down its emphasis on reading and math.

Really Leaving No Child Behind NYT
Mr. Miller’s draft contains some important reforms that deserve to become law, but much of that good will be undermined if states, schools and teachers are not held accountable for the quality of education they provide.

English learners left behind LA Times
Congress didn't get it all right with NCLB -- but it didn't get it all wrong either. Some simple improvements can make a good law better and more fair for all our students. Via EdNews.org.

In the meantime, this article from the New York Sun reminds us what states are really like, and are likely to do more of under a more open NCLB school rating system:

State Guts Its Test of Reading
The difficulty of a reading test used to judge students across New York State dropped by as many as six grade levels between 2004 and 2005, according to an internal study by the New York City teachers union obtained by The New York Sun.

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Feeling a little bit overwhelmed and bored over all this NCLB reauthorization action (already)? Me too. Plus which, I'm too lazy to read everything. So here are some handy-dandy resources to consider, with thanks for all the hard work you've done:

What You Should Think About the New Version of No Child Left Behind TQATE
"A good accountability system is a fragile thing, and making the law more complex also makes it more vulnerable to those who disagree with the principles themselves."

Miller-McKeon draft thoughts Sherman Dorn
"The first page is my attempt to cross-reference common criticisms of NCLB with pages/sections of the discussion draft that may address those criticisms."

Who's saying what about NCLB Reauthorization? ECS
"To better inform the national debate on NCLB reauthorization, ECS collected and analyzed these recommendations and created a one-stop source that allows you to easily find out who’s saying what about revising the law."

Cheat Sheet NCLB Part II
EdWeek's David Hoff dissects the MM draft in three sections (see also Part 1 and Part 2).

Posted by Alexander Russo at 3:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Thanks to the Ed Trust, here's a PDF of the Spellings letter to Miller that she promised yesterday, listing problems she and others have with the M&M discussion draft. Speaking of which, Miller said that Title II and the rest would be posted sometime today, which will help us see whether the teacher quality elements of NCLB are going to be strengthened or -- is such a thing possible? -- weakened. (There's a nod to teacher quality in the form of an attempt to close the equitability loophole in Miller's Title I proposal, according to EdWeek's David Hoff, but if they couldn't do that in 2001 they don't seem likely to take care of it now.)

Posted by Alexander Russo at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Way back at the beginning of 2006, EdSec Spellings was apparently called into the Oval Office to give counsel on what to do about former Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld -- and she recommended his termination, according to this book excerpt sent in by a friend. Who knew? Not that it made much difference. He resigned the day after the November elections. But at least we know she voted the right way.

Posted by Alexander Russo at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

See other posts for NCLB reauthorization coverage.

States investing more in Pre-K education Boston Globe
In just the past few months, governors and lawmakers from more than a dozen states have sealed deals to spend far more public money on childhood education.

Blacks in suburbs failing Md. exams Baltimore Sun
Minority students, especially African-Americans, are struggling to pass the exams.

The School Cafeteria, on a Diet NYT
School districts across the country have been taking steps to make food in schools healthier, but some parents say they are taking it too far.

Kids have real-life problems too Los Angeles Times
Grades and learning often pale in comparison to the hard-luck realities students face outside the classroom. Via EdNews.org.

Posted by Alexander Russo at 7:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Three different takes on how Cong. Miller's proposal is going over. Compare and contrast:

'No Child' Loopholes Decried Washington Post
Should suburban schools that barely miss federal learning targets be allowed to escape penalties, while inner-city schools that never even hit the dart board are required to give free tutoring and let students transfer to better schools?

Secretary of Education Criticizes Proposal NYT
The education secretary criticized a Congressional proposal to soften provisions of the President’s Bush signature education law.

Spellings Criticizes No Child Proposals AP
The administration and congressional lawmakers agree on one key change. They want schools to measure the performance of individual students over time rather than comparing the scores of students in a certain grade to students in that grade the year before.

Posted by Alexander Russo at 7:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The public mud-slinging between Spellings and Miller is really heating up. Makes you wonder what they say about each other behind closed doors. And, substantively, it bodes poorly for a strengthening of the current NCLB law.

Responding to Spellings' criticisms read to him by USA Today's Greg Toppo at a conference call with reporters today, Chairman Miller said that what he's trying to do with NCLB isn't just "wonkery" (as Spellings describes it) but rather much-needed changes to an imperfect law. "I know she wants to add confusion and doesn't like the debate," said Miller of Spellings. He also repeatedly mocked the "99.9 percent pure" claim Spellings once made (fire the writer who came up with that one), and called claims that multiple measures would muck up accountability "hokum."

Obviously, Miller's got to do what he's got to do, and -- this sentence is already so vague -- is going to go ahead and do it. But still it's sad to hear him denounce the current NCLB system which he created and defended for so long, now using much the same language as his detractors had (ie, a single test on a single day determining AYP). Such is politics. Somewhere, Joel Packer is smiling.

Posted by Alexander Russo at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

During an early afternoon press conference call, EdSec Spellings reiterated her concerns about the M&M (Miller and McKeon) discussion draft and said she was sending them comments in the hopes that they were still open-minded. She called the current NCLB and its 2014 goals "righteous, proper, and do-able." Some of the differences between the two positions seem relatively minor -- what form differentiated interventions should take, for example. Others -- multiple measures and other changes to AYP seem more problematic to Spellings.

Posted by Alexander Russo at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)