Throughout U.S. history, Texas has been at the center of a war or two, but will its latest war over history itself ever be resolved? (Curriculum Matters)
How could the wealthiest university in America lose $1.8 billion in cash? And how can [...]
On Dec. 11, 2001, the University of Maryland, College Park finalized a 10-year deal with Ralph Friedgen, its new football coach who had just helped the team qualify for a major bowl game. That deal wiped out a six-year agreement signed just over a year before for a new [...]
In the past week, students at various University of California campuses have demonstrated against the Regents’ decision to raise fees 32 percent by next fall, beginning with a 15 percent mid-year increase, by holding protests outside administrative offices and barricading themselves in school buildings. About 100 students have been arrested. [...]
What does an Indiana lawsuit teach us about the bizarre incentives school districts use to reward teacher performance when there are no incentives to reward teacher performance? (National Council on Teacher Quality)
If traditional public schools need school resource officers, do charter school kids require the same [...]
Second Grade Teacher Ashley Tugman (also fiancé to ES’s Forrest Hinton) sends in two views from her classroom at Noyes Elementary School in northeast Washington D.C. Since her class borders the playground, the “shade-drawn view” is a more regular occurance.
[...] I like to tell people I majored in public policy, but the truth is right there on the diploma. It says “Interdisciplinary Studies,” which is another way of saying I created my own major by picking courses from a number of university departments. I took some Economics, dabbled in Political [...]
“Use student achievement to measure teachers” is a catch-phrase or headline you might expect to hear or see working on education policy inside the beltway, but it wasn’t exactly what I expected to see waking up Sunday in Des Moines, Iowa. But, lo and behold, teacher evaluations were the focus [...]
College costs keep rising. Navigating these rough waters, should states choose Scylla (raising taxes) or Charybidis (raising tuition)? (Center for College Affordability and Productivity)
Even ESPN calls poker a “sport.” But as more students develop a gambling addiction, should colleges come to the [...]
The University of California system is reeling. Crushed by the recession and the total collapse of governance in the Golden State, the UC system just raised student tuition by a mind-boggling 32 percent. A few weeks ago, New York Times Magazine interviewer Deborah Solomon sat down with UC Chanchelor Mark [...]
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In the course of presenting a very interesting paper on international college rankings at an accountability conference I co-hosted yesterday, Ben Wildavsky made an observation that I strongly endorse: international competition in higher education isn’t a zero-sum game. In fact, I think there’s a good argument that America [...]
A new report by the Center for American Progress on district-union partnerships to extend school time profiles three models, including Brooklyn Generation. More about Brooklyn Generation and the Generation Schools model, which extends time for students but not for teachers, in this ES report and on our online [...]
This fall George Washington University became the first college in the country to dole out athletic scholarships for squash. Not exactly known as a sport for the masses, the school is now handing out $10-20,000 squash scholarships to Exeter grads, a move that is, apparently, worth a complimentary [...]
The Washington Post reports today that the Virginia Department of Education will study minority participation in gifted education programs in the state. As the press release notes,
Data reported by school divisions to VDOE show that while African-Americans make up 26 percent of the statewide student population, only 12 [...]
I already outlined a few interesting data tidbits that are in Federal Student Aid’s annual report (large PDF), but the report also has some information that is worth taking a closer look at in its own post. One of these areas is student loan default rates .
Loan default [...]
Education Next has a new story by David Bass about possible fraud in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). As EdNext is wont to do, the article leads with a provocative graph, this one purporting to show the rise in free and reduced-price lunches as the percentage of children [...]
Today’s “view” is from sunny California’s Fresno High School. Ms. Delaine Zody, who teaches marketing, yearbook, and multimedia at Fresno sent in today’s photo via flickr.
Fresno High School, Fresno, California
Federal Student Aid (FSA), the office within the U.S. Department of Education that handles loans and grants, recently published its fiscal year 2009 report. This document provides a lot of interesting information about the general state of federal postsecondary assistance and also rates the office’s performance over the past [...]
Generations Schools has found a way to redesign teachers’ work, ending the isolated classroom, enabling ongoing teacher collaboration and planning, and giving teachers time to learn from each other and to learn from their work. It has extended its school year to 200 days for students—20 more than the national [...]
First of all kudos to the Dept. of Education staff for putting out these regulation and largely sticking to a reform agenda while making reasonable adjustments. While some technical details caught my attention like the myopic calculation of ensuring that education is a funding priority, I found myself agreeing with [...]
Education Week’s District Dossier blog wrote last week about a new report on the effectiveness of desegregation programs in improving student achievement, stating:
After examining the nation’s eight remaining desegregation programs that enable disadvantaged students to cross school district boundary lines to attend more-affluent, suburban public schools, the researchers [...]
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Checker Finn describes my critique of his neo-Hooverite views on education policy and the stimulus bill as a “particularly dated defense of Keynesianism,” and asserts that borrowing money to prevent pro-cyclical mass layoffs and deep cuts in state and local education spending amounts to “Stalin-style job creation.”
This is [...]
Matthew K. Tabor takes to his blog to write an impassioned response to a piece I wrote, backed up by over 250,000 student records on the class of 1999, arguing the SAT and ACT mattered little in college admissions. His evidence? He The New York Daily News found [...]
Today, the biggest education news – some might say the only education news – is the announcement of the new regulations for Race to the Top. Where should you get your info? Depends on what you want to know:
Where can I find a detailed summary of the RTT regs? (Eduflack) Which [...]In the past week I’ve had the occasion to do some quick research on a number of institutions that had students take out federal loans in the past academic year but do not show up in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System—a U.S. Department of Education database with information [...]
At the National Review, Rick Hess and Checker Finn denounce the Obama administration for using stimulus funding to save the jobs of 400,000 teachers and college professors on the grounds that…this was a bad idea. Really:
It’s a fact that employment was an explicit purpose of stimulus funding — Congress [...]
The Journal of Positive Psychology recently put out an article called Positive Predictors of Teacher Effectiveness. In it, the authors suggest that novice teachers working in poor public schools do better if they have certain traits like grit. One of the authors of the paper, UPenn psychology professor Angela [...]
Habla usted Espanol? In middle and elementary schools, the answer is “less and less” according to a new study. (Center for Applied Lunguistics)
Who is Gotham calling on to save the city’s kids? Batman?(Gotham Schools)
Can an out-of-control food fight really land students in jail? (Slashfood)
In September a survey of Oklahoma high school students found only 2.8 percent were able to achieve a passing score on the U.S. Citizenship Test. The actual test has a 92.4 percent pass rate, so it would be quite a problem if Oklahoma high schoolers performed so poorly. But, [...]
Today’s “view” comes to us from a technology classroom at Sunset Park Preparatory Middle School in Brooklyn, N.Y. Thanks for sending in this great photo, Ms. Apfel!
Sunset Park Preparatory Middle School, Brooklyn, NY
Is there a better way to measure the performance of postsecondary schools? The Govs think they have an answer. (National Governors Association)
Despite all the craziness over college admissions is it easier to get into college these days? Really? (The College Puzzle)
With health care reform’s progress making a tortoise look like Usain Bolt (Saturday’s vote notwithstanding), efforts to reform the federal student loan programs have been more or less stuck in a holding pattern for the last seven weeks. Such inaction has provided time for new ideas and proposals to emerge [...]
It’s worth keeping an eye on what’s happening to virtual schools in Georgia. Last week, a group of charter schools bypassed the traditional route to charter authorization and sought to be funded exactly like any other public school in the state. (For the record, Georgia has 122 charter schools but [...]
No matter it’s structure, it’s a widely accepted fact at this point that there are ways to reform the federal student loan programs in order to reduce costs. At this point then, the more salient issue becomes exactly what these reforms should look like and what additional goals should be [...]
For whom do the (wedding) bells toll? (Washington Post Reliable Source)
When a university says “Everything is on the table” during budget cuts, could that possibly mean athletics? (San Francisco Chronicle)
Is it time for an Office of Consumer Protection—for higher ed? (American Progress)
Yesterday, the Institute for College Access and Success launched College-Insight.org, a new Web site that provides a wealth of data on individual colleges, systems, states, and sectors. It presents data on a range of topics, such as student financial aid, enrollment, degree production, and diversity. It’s definitely well worth [...]
The latest issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education includes a survey($) of the nation’s highest paid college presidents, a list topped by Shirley Ann Jackson, who was paid $1,598,247 to lead Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute last year. Jackson also sits on six corporate boards that pay her another $1.3 [...]
The Department of Education has released a prototype of a new Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) that would allow applicants to import their tax information directly from the IRS. Starting with next year’s application process, students will have this option to vastly simplify the process. Pdf of the [...]
Chad Aldeman, Kris Amundson, Renee Rybak, Ben Miller, Bill Tucker, Rob Manwaring, Erin Dillon, Kevin Carey, Elena Silva, guest blogger
