There’s a heated (verbal) battle going on around the country about school closures. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has made school turnarounds a central part of the Race to the Top, and several big-city superintendents are attempting to improve their schools by shutting down consistently poor-performing schools. As might be expected, the teachers and students [...]
All Posts Tagged: 'New York City Public Schools'
QUICK Hits
Reforms? Built into the new Detroit teacher contract? Really? (Detroit Free Press)
Want the inside skinny on TFA? Who better to consult than a TFA teacher – or a bunch of them? (Teachfor.us Blogs)
If the quality of the teacher is the biggest influence on student achievement, could a new NYC plan institute real quality control? (NY Daily [...]
New York City High School Fair
Over a warm, sunny weekend last September, 40,000 middle-school students and parents converged on Brooklyn Technical High School, a venerable, Art Deco structure in Fort Greene, to learn about New York City’s many high school programs. It was the New York City Department of Education’s annual high school fair, where representatives of hundreds of high [...]
No Child Tickets
En route to a meeting here in D.C., I walked by the Woolly Mammoth theater this morning and saw this poster for the solo show by former NYC public school teacher, Nilaja Sun. Sounds good, and more fun than most No Child events these days. It opened on Jan 21 and will be around through [...]
Value-Added Comes of Age
About four and a half years ago, I was working on a policy paper focused on a developing and controversial method of measuring teacher effectiveness called “value-added.” Created by Dr. Bill Sanders in Tennessee in the mid-1990s, the essence of value-added is pretty simple: Using annual standardized test scores, look at the prior achievement history [...]
More Good Education Labor News from NYC
It’s been a good month for education labor in New York City.
First there was the announcement of an important new merit pay plan supported by both the district administration and the United Federation of Teachers. Now, as reported in the New York Times, “In the largest successful organizing drive in New York City in half [...]
Merit Pay Mania
I’m a day late to the merit pay roundabout between the American Prospect’s Ezra Klein, the Atlantic’s Matt Yglesias, and the New Republic’s Jason Zengerle. But the points are still worth discussing, particularly Ezra’s kick-off post, which begins thusly:
I’m always amused by well-paid journalists and pundits complaining that teacher’s compensation isn’t closely enough linked to [...]
Lowering Student Loan Default Rates: What One Consortium of Historically Black Institutions Did to Succeed 
College and Career-Ready: Using Outcomes Data to Hold High Schools Accountable for Student Success
03/11/10 | Kevin Carey is quoted on the rising costs of education in The Economist.
03/10/10 | Chad Aldeman's False Fronts paper is quoted on Accuracy in Academia.
03/09/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on Federal Family Education Loan defaults on The Huffington Post.
03/09/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on loan origination on the Firedog Lake blog.
03/07/10 | Kevin Carey calls for a Race to the Top in higher education in a column in The Chronicle of Higher Education.