First Bell 4-9-13

yes Pamela Tatz / April 9, 2013

A first look at today's most important education news:

Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady of Britain, passed away yesterday. (Wall Street Journal and National Review Online)

After changing its screening process for gifted children in an attempt to lessen the influence of test-prep programs, there are slightly fewer children eligible for New York City’s gifted classes…but the changes aren’t huge. (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and New York Post)

A literature review finds that we don’t know enough about how student teaching affects teacher-candidates’ skills. (Teacher Beat)

An Education Week opinion piece blasts Bill Ayers’ assertion that the Atlanta scandal can be blamed solely on the testing policy. In the meantime, you can take a test to determine whether you have what it takes to teach in the Atlanta public school system. (Education Week, Answer Sheet, and New York Times)

According to a new report, the wage gap between public and private colleges is widening—and threatening academic quality. (New York Times and

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First Bell 4-9-13

First Bell 4-8-13

yes Pamela Tatz / April 8, 2013

A first look at today's most important education news:

Bill Gates cautions that teacher-evaluation systems must be built in a thoughtful and balanced manner, without overusing standardized tests. (Teacher Beat)

New York City teachers are staying in their jobs longer, due in part to the recession. (Wall Street Journal)

Mississippi lawmakers have passed legislation expanding charter schools in their state. (Hechinger Ed)

On Friday, Obama proposed paying for his pre-K expansion by raising taxes on tobacco products—an idea that is already facing heavyweight opposition. (Politics K–12)

The new superintendent of Dallas’s schools plans to replace forty to fifty principals out of the district’s 223. (Dallas News)

A new report finds that although homelessness can produce risk factors for students (such as high mobility, poverty, and unsafe living situations), homeless students also display strong indicators of resilience. (Inside School Research)

A new online platform called “myEDmatch” links teachers to schools that share similar values and cultures. (Teacher Beat)

» Continued

First Bell 4-8-13

The right response to the Atlanta cheating scandal

yes Michael J. Petrilli / April 5, 2013

For those of us who support academic standards, testing and accountability as strategies to improve public education, the Atlanta cheating indictments are sobering. Here was a system where dozens of employees, over the course of almost a decade, racketeered to rig results (or so it is alleged).

And while one can hope that Atlanta was an outlier in terms of the scope and longevity of its cheating conspiracy, it’s hardly an isolated case, as examples from El Paso, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and other locales demonstrate.

As expected, test critics are having a field day, using Atlanta as evidence of why all this must go. They yearn to throw the accountability baby out with the testing bathwater. But they’re wrong. The better approach is to “mend it, not end it.”

Try this thought experiment: What would happen if U.S. schools ceased all standardized testing—and related consequences? No more annual assessments, no more grading schools based on the results, no more interventions in low-performing schools, no more teacher evaluations tied to test scores, no more “merit pay” for high performing teachers or job jeopardy for low performers.

The result: In our most affluent communities, little would change. Schools would continue to drive toward the real-world standard of college acceptance at elite universities, via Advanced Placement exams and high SAT scores.

At schools serving both rich and poor kids, we would probably see a return to the 1990s, when achievement gaps were overlooked, wealthy students were guided toward

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The right response to the Atlanta cheating scandal

Agitating, standards, charters, teachers, and widgets

yes Andy Smarick / April 4, 2013

• Just got back from a great trip to Kansas City (part of my National Agitation Tour). The Kauffman Foundation is doing very important work (check out these videos), and their team members were terrific hosts. You can scroll through the audience’s take on my book talk here. Per my pushing for the replacement of the failed urban district, Marc Porter Magee, temporarily at the helm of the SS Hess-blog, turns in a good piece about the need for cage-busting leaders to change the system, not just break its rules.
• Common Core (and assessments!) guru KPM teamed up with Sol Stern on National Review Online to explain to conservatives why the new common standards aren’t to be feared or pilloried. Tom Friedman’s column explains why the U.S. needs tougher standards and expectations, even (especially?) in our more comfortable (complacent?) middle-class communities.
• If you care about urban schooling, charters, and/or governance reform, you ought to give the latest report from Fordham and Public Impact a read. It looks into charter performance in five cities and offers lots of reason for encouragement and sound advice for improving policy and practice. Its prescription (smart authorizing, closures, replications, strong support environment, etc.) mirrors that of my book. When you combine these lessons with recent findings from CREDO’s many city-

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  Category: Charters & Choice / Curriculum & Instruction / Standards, Testing, & Accountability / Teachers

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  Agitating, standards, charters, teachers, and widgets