Districts across the country are considering cutting the number of school days. The move is an extreme cost-savings measure, one that many are saying is unfortunate but necessary and unavoidable. But cutting school time, in some cases reducing the school year by weeks, is more than unfortunate. It’s wrong, and quite possibly the worst thing you can do for the education of kids. Consider Los AngContinue Reading »

The best writing comes from great reading. To continue Kris’ shoutout to EdSector’s WWR tradition, I recommend that we all dust off some Ray Bradbury, who died today at age 91. The author of Farenheit 451, the Martian Chronicles, and dozens of some of the most creative and horrific and funny novels and screenplays(Something Wicked This Way Comes!) and short stories (the Pedestrian!)Continue Reading »

As Quick Hits reports, a recent survey by Harvard professors Paul Peterson and Martin West, along with professor William Howell from University of Chicago reports that the share of teachers with a positive view of unions, and their impact on schools, has dropped 16 points from 58% in 2011 to 43% in 2012, while the number of teachers holding negative views jumped from 17% to 32%.

But the Continue Reading »

Last Friday I had the privilege of talking about the future of the teaching profession alongside an amazing cast of teachers, leaders, researchers, and policy folks at EWA’s annual conference in Philadelphia. The TED-type format–12 minutes for each of us– was fun and different from the regular panels (kudos to Greg Toppo who was a great MC). And it gave me the chance to walk on stagContinue Reading »

More than 12,000 New York City Teacher Data Reports will be released today, after a judge ruled Tuesday against the United Federation of Teachers’ argument that disclosing the ratings violates the teachers’ privacy rights. The Teacher Data Reports look like this. The ratings are based on value-added scores. They do not include value-added as one of several measures of performance. Although thisContinue Reading »

We’re getting close to a million students—903,000—that now take at least one AP exam while in high school. That’s double the number in less than a decade. And the number scoring a 3 or higher has also almost doubled, from 278,000 to 541,000. That’s good news for AP, and the College Board, which just released its 8th Report to the Nation.

It’s also good news for Maryland (again), Continue Reading »

Last year we described Providence’s joint labor-management efforts to turn around its lowest performing schools. The story centered on our “unlikely allies”, Providence union president, Steve Smith, and then-superintendent of schools, Tom Brady. Could these two characters create a new type of turnaround strategy, a unique collaborative restart model? Would it work?

At the time, it was alContinue Reading »

It looks like Hawaii has finally reached agreement on a new labor contract, much to the relief of the state and the USDOE who had threatened to pull back some or all of the state’s $75 million Race to the Top grant. The (statewide) district and union have been battling over teacher pay and evaluation provisions for more than a year. The dispute came to a head last summer, when the state announcContinue Reading »

In today’s Washington Post and then on Fordham’s site here, Fordham’s Mike Petrilli and AEI’s Rick Hess write that we are “defining excellence down” by not sufficiently challenging high-achievers. They are concerned that the nation’s focus—federal education efforts in particular—will “compromise opportunities for our highest-achieving students.”

Petrilli and Hess seem to think the Continue Reading »

If you’re a public school teacher you are likely facing (or bracing for) some big changes in the coming years. If your state has adopted the new common core standards (and only four have not), you will soon have to learn and teach this new set of standards. If you have a new set of standards, you will have new or revised curricula, including new scope and sequence and rubrics that perhaps you wContinue Reading »