U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan paid a visit to Education Week today, and spent an hour fielding questions from reporters about everything from No Child Left Behind Act reauthorization to the possibility of a second economic-stimulus package.
Duncan, who was accompanied by assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and [...]
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is giving planning grants of up to $100,000 each to nine school districts and charter groups to help them win Investing in Innovation, or i3, grants from the U.S. Department of Education.
This should come as no surprise given that Gates has already [...]
When your government-funded program is on the chopping block, a rather damning Inspector General audit will do little to bolster your case for continued funding.
Such is the case for the Center for Civic Education and its two grant programs, We the People and the Cooperative [...]
English-language learners, students in special education, and homeless students took center stage in the U.S. Department of Education's second "stakeholders" forum, held here in Washington today. These events are intended to help lay the groundwork for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
This one attracted a much smaller' [...]
Read deep into the final regulations for Race to the Top, and you'll see an outline of how the Education Department plans to judge states' applications.
There's the 500-point grading scale, of course.
But for the finalists, there's one last step: Fly to Washington, bring your five best [...]
Media reports about inaccurate estimates of just how many jobs have been saved or created under the federal economic stimulus law came back to bite Obama administration officials testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee this morning.
The hearing, which continues this afternoon, has been very partisan, with [...]
Education Secretary Arne Duncan, whose education experience is firmly planted in urban ground, is continuing to reach out to rural folks to figure out how the reforms he's pushing will play out in the farther reaches of the country.
Nine rural superintendents, from Michigan, Texas, West Virginia, California, Mississippi, Kansas,' [...]
Rep. David R. Obey, the Democratic chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and a major architect of the stimulus law, ranted and raved yesterday in this statement about inaccurate reporting on Recovery.gov.
"Credibility counts in government and stupid mistakes like this undermine it," Obey said. "Whether the" [...]
Thelma Melendez, the U.S. Department of Education's assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, hasn't made any headlines since taking this key K-12 job in the Obama Administration.
And in a 40-minute interview I had with her late last week, she wouldn't reveal' [...]
In Baltimore today, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the ultra-liberal Rev. Al Sharpton, and the Obama Administration's Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, continued their education reform road show. They visited three of the city's schools--a KIPP school, a regular old public school, and a neighborhood charter school--all serving [...]
If you haven't read Michele's thoughtful story on the final Race to the Top rules, you should do so immediately. She mentions that the Education Department has set "non-binding" spending levels for how big each winning state's grant might be. The levels are based on the number of' [...]
A sampling of reaction from around the blogsphere on today's release of final Race to the Top regulations:
Eduflack guesses that 4 or 5 states will win grants in Round 1 (heavily weighted toward the Gates states), with a dozen or so in Round 2.
Over at Flypaper,' [...]
With the Race to the Top final rules set to come out today, the major media outlets (from the Wall Street Journal to The Washington Post) all covered the news with different flair.
What's interesting in the New York Times' piece by Sam Dillon is that [...]
The U.S. Department of Education will unveil final rules for the $4 billion competition tomorrow, but until then, get the skinny at edweek.org.
[...]Two big-name Obama administration officials, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Melody Barnes, a top White House education adviser, will be speaking at the Harlem Children's Zone conference in New York.
The speeches will almost certainly showcase the Obama administration's budget proposal to create a Promise Neighborhoods program, which [...]
From guest blogger Debbie Viadero
Word slipped out at today's meeting of the National Board for Education Sciences that the final regulations for the Race to the Top program, which are due to be published any day now, will include a big focus on science, technology, engineering, and math or' [...]
Rick Hess, over at the American Enterprise Institute's Blog, asks an excellent question:
"Why Is the Secretary of Education Lobbying on the Healthcare Bill?"
' [...]
President Obama continues to try to drum up interest and excitement in Race to the Top, using a speech in Wisconsin today to urge the state's lawmakers to remove its student-teacher data firewall and highlight progress other states have made in gearing' [...]
The U.S. Department of Education has taken its Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization tour all the way across the street: to the National Museum of the American Indian, literally across Independence Avenue from department headquarters in Washington.
An event today gave tribal leaders, in town anyway for a [...]
By guest blogger Erik Robelen:
We've got a more complete picture this morning from yesterday's elections, especially concerning ballot measures of interest to the education community. For starters, those looking to protect, and perhaps increase, contributions to school coffers got some good news in Maine, Ohio, and Washington state.
Voters in [...]
By guest blogger Erik Robelen:
Two big-city mayors with control of their school systems won re-election tonight, as voters in New York City handed Michael R. Bloomberg, an Independent, a third term in office and Bostonians gave Democrat Thomas M. Menino a fifth term. Education figured prominently in both campaigns.
In [...]
Barack Obama will stop in Wisconsin tomorrow--one year and one day after being elected to the presidency--in advance of a key vote expected Thursday in the state legislature that could put Wisconsin in a better position to compete for the Race to the Top Fund.
Obama will cheer on the [...]
From guest blogger Catherine Gewertz:
About a month ago, the U.S. Department of Education's inspector general's office issued a memorandum that used Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Massachusetts as examples of how states may be violating the spirit—if not the letter—of the law on using State Fiscal Stabilization Fund money. The states [...]
The U.S. Department of Education released its own report today further breaking down the jobs data from the economic-stimulus package. The White House then hosted a conference call with Education Secretary Arne Duncan to further trumpet the estimated 640,239 jobs that have been saved, 325,000 of which [...]
