The Gadfly Daily’s week in review

The Education Gadfly / April 13, 2012

Fordham's bloggers didn't miss a beat this week, discussing all the week's most interesting education news, from Arizona to Ohio:

• Adam Emerson took Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to task for her rhetoric on school vouchers. Her explanation for vetoing a vouchers bill, he concluded on Choice Words, “pretends the expansion of private school choice would 'artificially manipulate' the market to the disadvantage of public schools.”

• “Why do we assume, when it comes to evaluating schools, that we must look at numbers alone?” wondered Mike Petrilli on Flypaper, advocating for the use of inspections in grading schools.

• “Shining light on the reality of how well our students are doing is the first step to upgrading expectations for students, schools, and the larger community, and ultimately developing the capacities needed to meet the challenge,” argued Emmy Partin on the Ohio Gadfly Daily.

• “Good schools can stem the tide of rural flight in some circumstances,” noted Chris Tessone on Stretching the School Dollar, “but once the process has reached critical mass, communities may have to dramatically reconfigure.”

• “Advocating for common standards and common assessments merely helps give parents the common language they need to understand that information,” argued Kathleen Porter-Magee on Common Core Watch. “In short: it’s a way of helping make parents more informed consumers.”

• “I confess to deep and continuous agita over the [education] system’s inability to do the right thing,” explained Peter Meyer on Board’s Eye View, noting "its amazing ability to deny reality, which is the prime directive for institutional entropy.”

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