Part VIII of the Five Principles for Smarter Data Systems series–a guest post from Arthur VanderVeen, Chief of Innovation, New York City Department of Education:
… it is astoundingly difficult to impact day-to-day classroom practices. And unless we design data systems with a primary goal of improving classroom teaching and learning, our investments will show little [...]
All Posts Tagged: 'Race to the Top Fund'
Smarter Data Systems: The New York City Experience
In Search of a Theory of Action: A Letter to Race to the Top Finalists
Part VI of this week’s Five Principles for Smarter Data Systems series–a guest post from Laurence Holt, EVP and Chief Product Officer for Wireless Generation, and an author of And Now For Something Completely Different, a guide to Instructional Improvement Systems from which the post below is adapted:
Dear Finalist,
First, congratulations! I assume you are busy [...]
Smarter Data Systems: The Classroom View
Part II of this week’s Five Principles for Smarter Data Systems series–a guest post from Norton Gusky, Coordinator of Educational Technology, Fox Chapel Area School District (PA):
We began a concentrated focus on using data about six years ago. We made the common mistake of purchasing an administrative system that really did nothing for teachers–and more [...]
Five Design Principles for Smarter Data Systems
Part I of this week’s Five Principles for Smarter Data Systems series:
In the past decade, school districts and states have spent more than a billion dollars to build and implement data systems. Data about student learning—and the systems that collect, organize, and report on this data—are what U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan calls “the [...]
Goldilocks and the RTTT Finalists
The Department of Education announced today that there are 16 semi-finalists, out of 41 states (including the District of Columbia) that applied for a chance at the $4 billion in competitive funds known as Race to the Top (RTTT). These 16 states (Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New [...]
Quick Hits
If you Tweet from space, does that make it a “Twitterverse?” (NASA)
How will you celebrate National Handwriting Day? By sending a text message? (WIMA)
Are pay increases for university presidents out of whack? Or simply out of touch? (Chronicle of Higher Education)
What does Frederick Hess have to say about the WSJ’s RTT editorial? [...]
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
EdWeek has a good long profile ($) up of Secretary Arne Duncan’s first year in office. For anyone interested in reading the tea leaves on how the Department’s inner sanctum is viewing the $4 billion Race to the Top competition, General Counsel Charles Rose had this to say:
“Just watch. People will be stunned by what [...]
A Race to the Top Summation Question
Back when I was in college, my student government would do incredibly stupid and illogical things. Instead of setting priorities and deciding which groups to fund, they would try to appease everyone by giving every group half of what they asked for. This would result in things like a student group asking for a $250 [...]
QUICK Hits
With RTT applications due today, what’s next? Try $1.3 billion on for size. (WhiteHouse.gov)
A sarcasm mark? Who needs THAT? (Just trying to make it sarcastic here) (Joanne Jacobs)
You’ve heard of the Monroe Doctrine – did last week’s speech outline a new Weingarten Doctrine? (Eduflack)
Is Sec. Duncan right about basketball players needing to [...]
Charter Laws
Charter school laws have been all over the news lately, with a second national organization releasing their rankings of state charter laws at the same time states are revising their laws in order to be eligible for the Race to the Top (RTTT) Fund’s $4.35 billion. Charter laws vary tremendously state-by-state, but the federal Department [...]
QUICK Hits
Will politics influence how RTTT funds are distributed among states? If so, how would the dollars hypothetically be doled out? (Politics K-12)
Dust off your eyes. Is heavily unionized Massachusetts really going to lift its cap on charter schools? (The Boston Globe)
What does Ed Trust’s latest report tell us about the presence [...]
California’s New Choice Policy May be Overshadowed by Budget Woes
Last week the California legislature passed a bill that significantly expanded the opportunity for students to be able to attend a school outside of a student’s district of residence as part of its Race to the Top package. Unfortunately, the state’s current budget woes may end up having the opposite effect of stopping choice from [...]
Top-Down Federal Programs
Teachers unions in two states have apparently decided their best route to attack the $4.35 billion Race to the Top (RTTT) Fund, the largest discretionary federal investment in public education ever, is to impugn it as “top-down” management.
I don’t get it. Aren’t all federal programs inherently top-down? Isn’t that what makes it federal, as opposed [...]
QUICK Hits
Could a He-Man Book Club make reading more appealing to the Y chromosome contingent? Maybe, if pizza and missing class are involved. (Education Week)
Want the scoop on what states are doing in the Race? Education Optimists have the latest roundup. (Education Optimists)
What happens when Harvard’s endowment goes in the tank? The tuition waiver [...]
First Take: $350m Assessment Competition Guidelines
Last week, the U.S. Department of Education released its initial overview of the competition process for the $350 million in stimulus funding set aside to improve student assessment (see Education Week’s helpful summary).
What We’ve Learned
It’s All About Accountability: Not surprising, but important to distinguish that ED’s plans are for assessments related to current NCLB mandates–reading [...]
Pie-Net Helps Ed Reformers Prepare for Race to the Top
The Policy Innovators in Education Network (Pie-Net) held their policy summit last week in Denver. If you are not familiar with Pie-Net that is a shame; it is a network of the education advocacy organizations (EAOs) from around the country that are doing the work in the trenches to get policies implemented to really transform [...]
California too Focused on the Canary in the Coal Mine
Since the release of the Race to the Top criteria, the California education community, news stories, editorial boards, and policymakers have had an intense focus on the fact that the California’s data system restricts the linkage of student data (assessment results) and teachers at the state level. But the problem of the state’s data system [...]
Crossing the Assessment Innovation Chasm
The announcement of a new National Science Foundation grant to the University of Wisconsin to further develop a game-based science and math learning program, along with an associated assessment system, caught my eye. It’s the exact type of promising technology-enabled assessment system that I wrote about in “Beyond the Bubble.” It’s also a good opportunity [...]
Improving Assessment: Getting from Here to There
In our op-ed earlier this week, my colleague Elena Silva and I reflected on Secretary Duncan’s Race to the Top “moon shot:”
The secretary wisely prods states to expand public charter school options, improve the quality of teaching, and address failing schools. But, unless his plans for improving our underlying navigational instruments—the tests that generate the [...]
Can You Support “Growth” and Oppose “Value-Added”?
The National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teacher’s union, opposes the draft regulations for the $4 billion Race to the Top Fund primarily because of language requiring states to be able to link teachers with student test score results. They cannot support it because:
Reviews of research on value-added methodologies for estimating teacher “effects” based [...]
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
03/19/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on college graduation rates and the NCAA Tournament in the Detroit Free Press.
03/19/10 | Linda Perlstein links to Education Sector's "College- and Career-Ready" event.
03/17/10 | Ben Miller's column on graduation rates and NCAA Tournament eligibility is mentioned on The Wall Street Journal's The Daily Fix.
03/17/10 | Kevin Carey's critique of Diane Ravitch's latest book is quoted in Doublethink's Conventional Folly blog.
03/15/10 | Ben Miller pens an op-ed for US News & World Report on using graduation rates to determine NCAA Tournament eligibility.