Today’s results from the 2009 PISA in reading, math and science skills of 15 year olds were released. See results (here) and commentary on it (here and here).There is always something of interest to be found in assessments like this. Clearly the highlight in this release was the amazing performance of Shanghai students. While China did not compete as a country, Shanghai did for the first Continue Reading »

Valarie Strauss highlights a tragic story of Los Angeles Academy, LA Unified school that will be part of the districts next round of school turnarounds. The author argues that the schools failure is a least in part the result of the layoffs the school has experienced in the last two years – 23 teachers in 2009 and 12 more in 2010. It appears that this is another school that has fallen victim toContinue Reading »

In a recent Ed Week article, I recommended that Congress require states to protect teachers at “persistently lowest performing” schools (schools receiving federal School Improvement Grants) from seniority based layoffs. In the school turnaround process that these schools are undergoing, they often hire new teachers as part of their reform strategies, and thus they often have some of the youngesContinue Reading »

As school districts around the country begin to receive their share of $3.5 billion in School Improvement funds it is worth taking a closer look at how that money is suppose to be spent, and what some of the critical factors will be that will determine whether districts have the capacity to be successful in their attempts. Districts were required to choose one of four different turnaround modelContinue Reading »

California’s school budget situation is an early signal of how much budgets are going to dominate the education discussion in 2011. As newly elected Gov. Jerry Brown prepares to takes office, he will face the worst education budget situation since he was last governor and had to cut spending after the passage of Prop 13. In fact this may be worse because it comes after several of budget reductiContinue Reading »

One issue likely to receive a lot of attention in the next two years at the state and local level is the need for pension reform. Tight state budgets and growing pension obligations create the need for changes. And the fact that the general public has seen their retirements take substantial hits, provides a political environment to actually make changes. Clearly the results of Tues election witContinue Reading »

While most of the media focus has been on the federal dynamic in the House and Senate, the real impact of yesterday’s elections on education will be the changes in the Governorships, and state legislative composition. Many governorships changed hands from Dems to Reps. Before yesterday’s election, 18 of the 37 governorships were controlled by Reps, 19 by Dems. Now 23 are Reps, 10 Dems, 1 IndepeContinue Reading »

As we all know, where state’s set their proficiency bar varies dramatically. And, many states set very low bars which perhaps are not unexpected given the structure of the NCLB accountability system.

A new report out by AIR compares state proficiency to international expectations to see how rigorous states expectations are in comparison. The results surprised me. Yes, this study shows onContinue Reading »

Kudos to Sara Mead for this nice post on what the preschool quality debate should be about. As I have written earlier, preschool quality is a critical issue for all K-12 school reformers and Head Start may be the place to start. Proposed Head Start regulations will use a standard based observation tool, the CLASS, to determine the quality of preschool instruction. These observation measures wouContinue Reading »

The answer is more than the state of California provides. In an attempt to maintain its 95% graduation rate for its low income black and Latino students, Inner City Education Foundation (ICEF) takes some serious risks that almost ended in bankruptcy. The big backers of the charter school movement are coming in to save the day including new leadership – Caprice Young, prior head of the CaliforniContinue Reading »