Category Archives: Federal Government

One thing December brings is the obligatory year-end lists. If you are even a casual reader of this blog, then you should be interested in taking a moment to vote on the “Best and Worst in American Education, 2011” — brought to you by the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force on K-12 Education. Being of a decidedly reform-minded bent, the group has offered up some expected developments in their five choices for each of the “Best” and “Worst” categories. Most of the items I’ve covered at one time or another during 2011. Naturally I can’t make you vote for any particular events (or even vote at all), but I am making some strong suggestions that fans could select on my behalf as one of the most inexpensive Christmas gifts you’ve ever purchased. This is my blog, and I like to save the best for last. So which of the five choices should you recognize as the worst education event of 2011?

When I happened to mention to my mom and dad that I might blog about this issue, one of them said: “That’s the kind of topic you bring up when you want to break up a party.” Well, there isn’t any party going on here right now, so why not just throw the provocative question out there: Are teachers paid too much? Before you roll your eyes, pick up your coat and walk out in disgust, let me explain briefly. It’s not this precocious little 5-year-old who’s dumping broccoli on the birthday cake. It’s Andrew Biggs and Jason Richwine, from a couple of Washington think tanks, who a couple weeks ago released the report Assessing the Compensation of Public School Teachers. Sounds pretty innocent, doesn’t it? Just wait. They released the report at an event called “Are Public School Teachers Overpaid?” Now look. I could only begin to start explaining the research methods and the finer points of the debate. As a provocative way to bring attention to the topic of K-12 employee compensation, asking “Are Public School Teachers Overpaid?” is an effective way to bring attention to your work. And it definitely brought attention. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne […]

I’m not sure what it is with big people’s fascination with politics, and how discussions about education seem to cross over into the absurd the closer big elections get. Case in point: the Republican governor of Texas announces he is a candidate for President. Less than a week later, the Democratic U.S. Secretary of Education levels a bizarre and scathing critique at the Lone Star State: “Far too few of their high school graduates are actually prepared to go on to college,” Duncan said on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt” airing tonight and tomorrow. “I feel very, very badly for the children there.” “You have seen massive increases in class size,” Duncan said of the Texas public school system during Perry’s terms as governor since December 2000. “You’ve seen cutbacks in funding. It doesn’t serve the children well. It doesn’t serve the state well. It doesn’t serve the state’s economy well. And ultimately it hurts the country.” Eduwonk and Time Magazine education columnist (and Democrat) Andrew Rotherham was as puzzled as anyone by the Secretary’s broadside, and got a chance to follow up directly:

Judging by some of the grumbling I hear from my parents lately, there’s a big hubbub in Washington, D.C., about people in government borrowing bazillions of dollars and not paying it back — or something like that. Which reminds me… You really ought to watch this 2-minute video put together by my friends at the Independence Institute: Even though it stars yucky girls, it won seventh place in some big national competition. Guess I should be happy for all of them — so sue me, all right? But anyway, this is an education blog, and I did have a reason for bringing up D.C. and politicians. (Only so often, you know, don’t want to make it more than I can take.) Allison Sherry of our own Denver Post has an interesting write-up for Education Next on the education policies and platforms of leading Republican presidential contenders. While you should read through the whole thing, I picked out one section to highlight:

Update, 7/28: Writing at redefinED, Doug Tuthill and Adam Emerson highlight the rich irony behind the “Save Our Schools” phenomenon. So apparently there’s some big national march called “Save Our Schools” or something like that. I told you about it a month ago. While the good people at the National Council on Teacher Quality took a conciliatory approach to pointing out the flaws in the “SOS” program. But the award goes to Sara Mead, writing at Eduwonk, for this effective takedown: …This is not an agenda for accomplishing anything. It’s just a wish list. Half of it is a wishlist of things the organizers don’t want (performance-based pay, school closures). Half of it is a wishlist for things someone might want, without any clear theory of how to operationalize them or what that might actually look like in practice in the real world. (I, too, would like to see “Well-rounded education that develops every student’s intellectual, creative, and physical potential”–but in the absence of clear prescriptions and mechanisms about how to make that a reality, well, you might as well wish for a pony, too.)… I can’t help but think that a lot of people marching on the nation’s capital […]

Update, 7/7: Guest-writing over at Eduwonk, the insightful Paul Hill gives valuable perspective to the scandal, noting that Atlanta had taken a very inside-the-box approach to achieve its touted phony scores and suggesting the use of online adaptive tests as a policy solution that curbs cheating while preserving test-based accountability. The big, hard-to-ignore education news of the week comes from Atlanta, Georgia, in the sunny South. The Christian Science Monitor‘s Patrick Jonsson reports: Award-winning gains by Atlanta students were based on widespread cheating by 178 named teachers and principals, said Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal on Tuesday. His office released a report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that names 178 teachers and principals – 82 of whom confessed – in what’s likely the biggest cheating scandal in US history. This appears to be the largest of dozens of major cheating scandals, unearthed across the country. The allegations point an ongoing problem for US education, which has developed an ever-increasing dependence on standardized tests. Let me tell you: If I got caught cheating, I couldn’t even imagine the consequences my parents would bring down on me. No trips to the beach all summer? No dessert for a month? Grounded from playing […]

Still trying to recover from the big fireworks last night, I couldn’t decide between two blogging ideas this morning. So instead I’m giving you a little bit of both. First, you just have to read today’s Wall Street Journal editorial proclaiming what I told you last week — that 2011 is indeed The Year of School Choice: No fewer than 13 states have enacted school choice legislation in 2011, and 28 states have legislation pending. Last month alone, Louisiana enhanced its state income tax break for private school tuition; Ohio tripled the number of students eligible for school vouchers; and North Carolina passed a law letting parents of students with special needs claim a tax credit for expenses related to private school tuition and other educational services. The Douglas County Choice Scholarship program gets a mention later on in the piece, making Colorado one of the 13 states. Isn’t that number ironic, coming right after the July 4th holiday, remembering the number of colonies that declared independence from the British crown? It could have been 14, if Pennsylvania hadn’t fumbled the ball, as the Journal points out. So make that Year of School Choice almost perfect.

Believe it or not, July is here and the Independence Day weekend is practically upon us. You know what that means. Lots of red, white and blue; cookouts; parades; and, of course, fireworks. But probably not the kind of fireworks you’re thinking of. One thing about fireworks is how they can provide a moment of brilliant light that illuminates the sky and sometimes the ground below, providing a candid glimpse of things otherwise concealed by a blanket of darkness. In that sense this frank declaration of union priorities delivered at the 2009 National Education Association Representative Assembly certainly would qualify as fireworks: Will there be similar fireworks — or maybe fireworks of another kind — at this year’s NEA event, which is now getting underway in Chicago? The big attention for 2011 is focused on NEA’s new teacher evaluation policy proposal, but the agenda also includes a proposed dues hike and a formal endorsement of President Obama for re-election. The best coverage of the NEA Representative Assembly (hands-down) can be found at two blogs: Mike Antonucci’s Intercepts and Stephen Sawchuk’s Education Week Teacher Beat. Light a sparkler or two for me while you’re at it.

If you think American K-12 education policy is a complex and tangled web of laws, bureaucracies, incentives, politics and emotions — and you would be quite normal to do so — then treading into the narrower world of special education services might make your head completely spin. It’s the day after a long and fun Memorial Day weekend, in which most of my time was spent with playgrounds or Legos. So rather than make any grand interpretations or pronouncements, I want to bring your attention to the new Fordham Institute report by Janie Scull and Amber Winkler, titled Shifting Trends in Special Education. Nationwide, the number and share of special education students peaked in 2004-05 and has been on the decline ever since. The report explains:

If you gave me a big box of crayons and asked me to write a manifesto, it’s probably not what I would have come up with. But I am glad to give it a big thumbs up, and hope that lots of big people sign on. What am I talking about? Closing the Door on Innovation: Why One National Curriculum is Bad for America: We, the undersigned, representing viewpoints from across the political and educational spectrum, oppose the call for a nationalized curriculum in the Albert Shanker Institute Manifesto “A Call for Common Content.” We also oppose the ongoing effort by the U.S. Department of Education to have two federally funded testing consortia develop national curriculum guidelines, national curriculum models, national instructional materials, and national assessments using Common Core’s national standards as a basis for these efforts. We agree that our expectations should be high and similar for all children whether they live in Mississippi or Massachusetts, Tennessee or Texas. We also think that curricula should be designed before assessments are developed, not the other way around. But we do not agree that a one-size-fits-all, centrally controlled curriculum for every K-12 subject makes sense for this country or for any […]