- Michigan governor Rick Snyder came up big with his new ed-reform plan. Cool, head-turning proposals include: Mandating that districts accept students from other districts (as part of MI’s open-enrollment plan), ending the master’s degree pay bump, and making Michigan’s funding system performance-based, with bonuses for growth. But he doesn’t stop there: The whole thing is worth a good, long read. If you see Rick, give him a high-five from Fordham.
- Class-size reduction (CSR) looks great to parents and many policymakers. In fact, 77 percent of Americans think that additional edu-dollars should be spent on smaller classes, not higher teacher salaries. In his recent paper, Matt Chingos says they’d do well to rethink this view. “Large-scale CSR policies clearly fail any cost-benefit test,” he reminds us.
- “Without testing, there is no consistent way to
measure success or failure http://nyti.ms/hakLGd.”
Just one of the many great tweets from @OldDianeRavitch, who plumbs
Ravitch’s past for earlier nuggets of lasting wisdom. (Reward given for
information leading to the discovery of the Tweeter’s identity.)
- People magazine provides your gossip, the Joy of Cooking your recipes. And now EdSector’s “A Portrait of School Improvement Grantees” teaches you all you want to know about the 843 schools receiving the nearly $6 billion in SIG funding. There are cool interactive maps to boot—get excited!
- As NCLB reauthorization grinds to a halt, expect from Arne Duncan more waivers and backroom tactics to avert the law’s strict mandates. He’s usually right on the merits—but since when does the executive branch do the legislating? And does this ease the pressure on Congress to face the NCLB music?
- More ridiculousness from Michael Winerip. This time, he’s targeting Eva Moscowitz and charter-management organizations. When it comes to biases and misrepresentations in the media, he might even be worse than Randi Weingarten.
- What if “snow days” became “e-learning days”? Now we’re on to something…
