- Do charter schools skim the top students from traditional public schools? A new policy brief from the Urban Institute attempts to answer this question in the context of Washington DC, one of the nation’s largest alternative schooling hubs, analyzing the family incomes and academic proficiency levels of DC students that exercise school choice.
- It’s time for Ohio to go on a diet. That’s the sentiment, at least, of State Auditor Dave Yost, who recently launched Skinny Ohio, a website to share the best cost-cutting ideas from around the state with local governments and school districts trying to make ends meet (and avoid bad cuts).
- “Confessions of a school ranker” is Jay Matthews’s analysis of school ranking systems in light of the recently-released results of his High School Challenge project, which provides yearly rankings of the nation’s top 1900 public high schools. At the top of the list this year was the Dallas, TX School of Science and Engineering Magnet. Ohio’s top school was Cincinnati’s Walnut Hills High School, which ranked #73 overall.
- Collective bargaining not your style? If you live in Tennessee, rejoice: “Collaborative conferencing” is coming to town. Education Week reports that a new law recently enacted by the Tennessee legislature would give school boards more power than they previously had in negotiations with union representatives, but wages, insurance, working conditions, and the like are still on the bargaining—er, conferencing—table.
