edBurst Update
A Newsletter for Education Leaders
This"Update" is revised regularly.
New articles have been added (at the top) as old articles are dropped (from the bottom).
K-12
Veterans of the math warsOn Monday, the state Board of Education will vote on a proposal to adopt national Common Core State Standards, commissioned by President Obama and adopted by 27 states. If the board votes yes, as recommended by the 21-member state Academic Content Standards Commission, the Golden State's eighth-grade Algebra I standard will go the way of old soldiers... more»
Lesson Plan in Boston Schools: Don’t Go It Alone
Instead of principals hiring teachers individually, three schools have assembled teams of experienced teachers to anchor their schools and work with new teachers...more»
Inexperienced Companies Chase U.S. School Funds
Dozens of companies with little or no experience turning around schools are competing for billions in federal funds... more»
High Standards vs. Local Control
During the past week, conservative educational icons have been sparring over whether the Right ought to embrace the new “Common Core” standards developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. The debate has gained urgency as more than 25 states have signed on in the past two months... more»
Race to the Top program spurs school-reform debate
The U.S. Department of Education has named 18 states and the District of Columbia as finalists in the second round of the federal “Race to the Top” (RTTT) grant competition, giving them a chance to receive a share of $3.4 billion to implement broad school reforms... more»
Obama refuses to budge on Race to the Top education reforms
Many critics of President Obama's Race to the Top education reforms come from core constituencies of his own party. Mr. Obama took a stand for Race to the Top in a speech Thursday... more»
Teachers Lose Jobs Over Test Scores
Washington, D.C., Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee fired 241 teachers Friday under a new evaluation system that holds teachers accountable for student test scores. She also put an additional 17% on notice that if they don't improve next year, they could lose their job... more»
Feds to create an Online Learning Registry
In a move to help rural schools keep pace with more developed districts, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) said it will create an Online Learning Registry that will provide access to historical, artistic, and scientific primary-source materials... more»
When Tenure Trumps Talent
Last-in-first-out policies virtually guarantee that, come next school year, many talented, motivated teachers will be out of a job and some less talented, less motivated teachers will return to the classroom. Both students and teachers will suffer the ill effects of these choices, long after the economy rebounds and staffing levels return to normal... more»
Uniform education standards: Momentum grows as more states sign on
About 40 states will probably have adopted the ‘Common Core’ education standards by spring. But critics caution that buy-in is just a start... more»
Race to the Top Finalists Announced
Education officials announced that DC and 18 states remain in the running for a share of $3.4 billion in the federal "Race to the Top" competition for school reform. But bipartisan efforts to rewrite the No Child Left Behind law, which Education Secretary Arne Duncan sought to jump-start months ago, have stalled... more»
School Is Turned Around, but Cost Gives Pause
Locke High School in Los Angeles has seen significant progress since it was taken over by a charter school group in 2008, but the gains have come at a considerable cost...more»
Rhee gets star turn in education film 'Waiting for Superman' at Silverdocs
(RSP: I rarely plug commercial ventures, even when they deserve to be plugged. Having just seen ""Waiting for Superman" at the Nantucket Film Festival, however, and like Michelle Rhee, having been moved to tears, as were many in the audience, I am making an exception for this exceptional new documentary by the director of "An Inconvenient Truth." No doubt it will make the teachers unions squirm, but it should not antagonize teachers themselves, as it makes clear the distinction between good teachers and a good education system. Go see it.)... more»
Whatever Happened to No Child Left Behind?
Some time in the last two or three years, we moved into the post-NCLB era of education reform, says Kevin Carey. It didn’t used to be that way…more»
Carpe Data: In Defense of Common StandardsIn English and language arts, the new common-core standards will provide a set of universal expectations from which all local planning, comparison, and improvement can flow, argues high school teacher H. Ogden Morse...more»
Small Schools
A study showing that New York City’s specialized high schools are outperforming large, factory-style ones should breathe more life into the small-school movement...more»
Why We Dislike Teachers’ Unions"In New Jersey, where I live, you’ll be hard-pressed to find somebody who feels the New Jersey Education Association, as a union, improves the educational experience for students."...more»
International Program Catches On in U.S. Schools
The International Baccalaureate, an alternative to the Advanced Placement program, is offered in 700 schools...more»
Teachers’ Union Shuns Obama Aides at ConventionThe largest union’s meeting opened here on Saturday to a drumbeat of heated rhetoric, with several speakers calling for Mr. Duncan’s resignation, hooting delegates voting for a resolution criticizing federal programs for “undermining public education,” and the union’s president summing up 18 months of Obama education policies by saying, “This is not the change I hoped for”...more»
Sorry, Teachers’ Unions, The Status Quo Needs To Go
As The Wall Street Journal put it, while anyone outside of public education would consider these reforms simply common sense, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association and their local affiliates have fiercely opposed them. It’s incredible that any organization would fiercely oppose removing incompetents from their ranks...more»
Report: Online Learning Nearly Doubles Among High School StudentsThe percentage of high school students taking online courses nearly doubled in a single year. According to the latest data available from Project Tomorrow's annual Speak Up Survey, more than one-quarter (27 percent) of all high school students took at least one class online last year, up from 14 percent the year before. But the numbers could have been higher, according to the researchers...more»
Jobs Bill Collides With Obama Education Agenda
The sharp division between the Obama administration and key congressional Democrats over education policy and priorities may never have been more clear than it was Thursday night when the U.S. House of Representatives voted to cut $800 million from key administration initiatives to help pay for an effort to avert teacher layoffs...more»
Research dispels common ed-tech mythsContrary to popular opinion, newer teachers aren't any more likely to use technology in their lessons than veteran teachers, and a lack of access to technology does not appear to be the main reason why teachers do not use it: These are among the common perceptions about education technology that new research from Walden University’s Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership appears to dispel...more»
Conservative Candidates Take Aim at Federal K-12 Role
The conservative currents roiling the 2010 midterm election season bring with them a new group of Republican congressional candidates who are outspoken about their desire for a limited federal role in education policy and funding...more»
Teaching Machine Sticks to Script in South KoreaThe country, known for its enthusiasm for technology, is “hiring” hundreds of robots as teacher aides and, and is experimenting with robots that would teach English...more»
Computers at Home: Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality
Researchers measuring a home computer’s educational value to a schoolchild in a low-income household are finding that test scores tend to go down, not up...more»
Bill Gates Attacks Fraudulent Accounting For Public School PensionHe cares about our kids and their future...The Wall Street Journal highlights Gates' views in writing...more»
E-Education Inc. Seeks the Mainstream
For-profit online course providers are expanding in the K-12 market, but experts urge schools to critically evaluate the benefits the companies tout...more»
School Officers Release Core Teaching Standards for Public CommentThe draft core standards seek to make professional teaching standards consistent throughout the states...more»
States Embrace National Standards for Schools
Less than two months after the nation’s governors and state school chiefs released their final recommendations for national education standards, 27 states have adopted them and about a dozen more are expected to do so in the next two weeks. States that adopt the standards by Aug. 2 win points in the Obama administration’s Race to the Top competition for a share of the $3.4 billion to be awarded in September... more»
Race to the Top: A sprint when we need a marathonYou can't understand the promise and peril of this moment in school reform without wrapping your mind around a paradox: Race to the Top is both innovative and demonstrably unequal to the challenges we face...more»
Final Version of Common Standards Unveiled
The document outlines what experts decided are the knowledge and skills students should have in mathematics and English/language arts...more»
Needed: Fresh Thinking on Teacher AccountabilityEven if a perfect test of teacher effectiveness were devised, writes James W. Stigler, it would not "get us where we need to go"...more»
Storming the School BarricadesA new documentary by a 27-year-old filmmaker could change the national debate about public education...more»
States Up Ante on Applications for Race to TopAfter 39 applicants went home losers from the first round of the Race to the Top competition, many states regrouped and raised the stakes for round two-changing laws to revamp teacher evaluations, drumming up more support from districts and teachers’ unions, and getting more aggressive about turning around low-performing schools...more»
Some educators question if whiteboards, other high-tech tools raise achievement
Under enormous pressure to reform, the nation's public schools are spending millions of dollars each year on gadgets from text-messaging devices to interactive whiteboards that technology companies promise can raise student performance. But are they worth it?...more»
Race to Top Buy-In Level ExaminedStates significantly increased buy-in from local teachers’ unions in round two of the Race to the Top competition, but made far less progress in enlisting districts or expanding the number of students affected by the states’ education reform plans. Those patterns emerged from an Education Week analysis of applications from 29 states and the District of Columbia, all of which entered both rounds of the $4 billion federal grant contest...more»
Towns Tap Businesses, Churches to Shore Up BudgetsShort on money for everything from math workbooks to microscope slides, public schools across the nation are seeking corporate and charitable sponsors, promising them marketing opportunities and access to students in exchange for desperately needed donations...more»
The right way to assess teachers' performanceHow to really assess teachers based on student achievement...more»
Schools Face Texting Explosion Among TeensText messaging has become the preferred method of communication for teenagers, according to a recent study. The survey, conducted from June to October 2009, found that 54 percent of teens were texting daily—up from 38 percent only 18 months earlier...more»
Scoring Race to the Top: A Look Behind the CurtainIn this exclusive analysis published by Education Week, journalist Steven Brill looks at how judges’ scoring sheets and written comments show inconsistencies and soft spots in the process...more»
Buyouts, not bailouts, for teachers
A better business model for America's education system...more»
Beyond the Rhetoric of National Standards
Using Japan as an example, Gary DeCoker writes of eight ways that the new common-core standards may benefit U.S. education...more»
We're flunking personal financeThe financial teaching grade is in for teachers -- and it's not good. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison surveyed K-12 educators and found that most instructors don't think they are suitably trained to teach their students the basics of personal finance. The study, "Teachers' Background & Capacity to Teach Personal Finance," was funded by the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE)...more»
Tensions Flare in Race to Top's Second RoundWith the second-round deadline for federal Race to the Top Fund grants less than six weeks away, states are rushing to raise the stakes on their education reform plans as they fight over the remaining $3.4 billion in prize money. But in doing so, states are tangling with their teachers’ unions as they test how far they can go to meet federal officials’ demands that they be aggressive, yet inclusive, in devising a road map to dramatically improve student achievement...more»
Survey reveals gaps in school technology perceptionsThe results from a recent survey on education technology suggest that schools are making progress on integrating technology into the curriculum—but the survey also reveals key disparities in how students, educators, administrators, and even aspiring teachers think of various technology tools...more»
Race to Top Hopefuls Seek to Crack 'Buy-In' PuzzleIn the round-two scramble for $3.4 billion in federal Race to the Top Fund grants, the need for school district and union buy-in-a relatively small, but important part of any winning formula-poses a policy puzzle for the competing states...more»
