- Afraid that their mantra “A's all around!” won’t pertain to them, teacher-preparation programs are protesting the NCTQ/U.S News and World Report plan to issue the programs A through F grades for effectiveness. With ed schools remiss to assign anything less than sub-stellar grades, someone needed to fill that void.
- Yet potential headway has been made in the Empire State. The founders of Teacher U will open a new stand-alone graduate school of education next fall. Dubbed the Relay School of Education, it will offer education degrees (not alt certifications) only to those who work full-time in the classroom.
- Education reformers in the state trenches beware. Reports of vandalism and harassment against state-level reformers, including our friend Tom Luna, Idaho’s state supe, have been coming off the ticker. (We’re not kidding.)
- Gone are the days when toddlers learned to play nicely with others or—maybe—the letters of the alphabet. Chicago parents interested in enrolling their children in one of CPS’s better Kindergarten programs have started hiring tutors to teach basic geometry, pattern recognition, and advanced literacy skills.
- A recent public hearing before the Commission on Civil Rights has landed ED’s Office of Civil Rights back on the front pages as OCR begins to define the slippery notion of “disparate impact”—when a policy unintentionally discriminates against a particular group—and which remedies actually may work. We agree that caution is in order.
- Interested in how your local district spent its education-stimulus funds? Edmoney.org has the information you seek.
- Last year marked a 30 percent increase since the previous year in the number of Chinese students studying at America’s higher-education institutions. Forget Sputnik, we need a modern-day Paul Revere.
- The California state board of education has pulled back the parent trigger—via the guise of “smart implementation planning."
