Brookings scholar Tom Loveless is a clear-eyed empiricist who digs deep into test score data and often emerges with surprising findings. A few years back, for example, he looked at individual-student NAEP data to learn that there was no correlation whatsoever between a state’s math score on NAEP and the percentage of students enrolled in advanced classes.

But sContinue Reading »

With $700 million in federal Race to the Top money at risk, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the New York Federation of Teachers worked out a deal on a new teacher evaluation system this week. On Friday, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, praised the agreement, which calls for 40 percent of a teacher’s evaluation to be based on student achievement. The rest ofContinue Reading »

Image Credit: Flickr User, Mollivan Jon

Last week Cleveland Mayor Frank G. Jackson announced that the city’s school district would transform itself from a command-and-control bureaucracy into a confederacy of schools operating with greater-or-lesser autonomy, depending on their performance. Charter schools as well as district-operated ones would participate, witContinue Reading »

Credit: National Education Association

A year and a half ago, Dennis Van Roekel, president of the 3.2-million-member National Education Association, asked an independent panel of highly accomplished teachers to create a bold, new vision for their profession and then recommend what the NEA should do to make that vision a reality.

Van Roekel got just what aContinue Reading »

One of the critiques of modern U.S. school reform is that in many places raising test scores has become the sole purpose of education. In my opinion, that is happening at far fewer places than it might seem, given the anguish and resentment that churns across the Internet and at education conferences. But  there is no doubt that anger over too much testing is rising. The fury is also driving grContinue Reading »

Even in the most troubled neighborhoods and communities—those disrupted by poverty, poor health, violence and other ills—there are usually far more services available for children and youth than is readily apparent. Public agencies, non-profit organizations, charities, and volunteer groups all try hard to do their part to help kids grow up healthy and safe, and successfully gain the education tContinue Reading »

If itinerant football coach and short-time television analyst Urban Meyer wasn’t already a member of the 1 percent, he became one in a hurry when he signed a contract worth a minimum of $26.65 million over six years to coach at Ohio State. On top of that, he could earn as much as $600,000 in bonuses each year and will also receive a fully paid golf club membership, 50 hours of private jContinue Reading »

Eleven states yesterday applied to the federal government for relief from much of the law formerly known as No Child Left Behind, including the law’s demand that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014. To get that freedom the states had to commit themselves to implementing: “career and college ready” standards; accountability systems that focus more attention on low-perforContinue Reading »

California Gov. Jerry Brown is one of the most powerful anti-student testing politicians in the country. So, when given the chance to sign into law a new system of education accountability that would place far less emphasis on test scores, what did Brown do? He vetoed it. In his veto message over the weekend he called the bill “yet another siren song of school reform” that “relies on the same qContinue Reading »