Sam Dillon writes in today’s NY Times about the outlook for reauthorizing/rewriting No Child Left Behind. In a nutshell, experts say it’d be a heavy lift to get it done this year. Still, Sec. Arne Duncan/the admin & lawmakers are apparently starting to move on it. According to the story:

Mr. Duncan said in an interview on Thursday that key lawmakers “share our sense of urgency” about the need for an immediate rewrite, and were already pitching in.

The piece goes on to explain that Duncan and more than a dozen admin officials met with top Democrats and Republicans of the House and Senate education panels last week to discuss a re-write.

And yes, the article cites Checker on the matter, quoting from both a live interview and a Flypaper post he wrote on Thursday. In the post Checker wrote, “One can only wish them well, but re-working this monstrously complex statute is apt to prove almost as challenging as health care.”
–Amy Fagan

The New Yorker has a lengthy profile of Arne Duncan in its February 1 issue. A colleague of mine pointed out this segment in particular: “Duncan, who is forty-five, is six feet five and long-limbed, with a pale face that tapers to a wedgelike chin.” ….Nice.

The piece has many anecdotes and quotes from a variety of folks weighing in on Duncan and his efforts. Among them, a Mike Petrilli quote (from Flypaper) describing Race to the Top as “the carrot that feels like a stick.”

– Amy Fagan

Race to the Top is causing quite the buzz this week and our Andy Smarick  has been busy sharing his thoughts on the matter with many reporters. What does he make of it? Well, you can read some of his comments in the Baltimore Sun, Christian Science Monitor, Virginian-Pilot and Bloomberg/Business Week.

–Amy Fagan

If you missed our excellent joint-conference with AEI on Monday, no need to beat yourself up! You can watch it (over the long weekend) on C-Span, here. C-Span was with us all through the day, filming A Penny Saved: How Schools and Districts Can Tighten Their Belts While Serving Students Better. During the conference we heard from an excellent group of scholars, education leaders and other experts. Specifically, the panels discussed an overview of school spending, what savvy leaders could do differently, why change is possible, and the biggest barriers to change. Please check it out. And note that all of the papers presented on Monday are available on the AEI website, here.

–Amy Fagan

The Fordham/AEI “Penny Saved” conference has been great so far! (A Penny Saved: How Schools and Districts Can Tighten Their Belts While Serving Students Better). You can follow it live on twitter (under educationgadfly and #pennysaved). You can watch our live webcast, which is a the beginning of our last panel: Overcoming Barriers to Change. Panelists are June Kronholz, formerly of the Wall Street Journal; Stacey Childress, Harvard Business School; and Martin West, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Discussants are Lily Eskelsen, National Education Association; and Dwight D. Jones, Colorado’s commissioner of education. You can read all the draft papers from today’s conference on the AEI website.

Editors over at the New York Times have spurred an interesting discussion about Advanced Placement classes on one of their blogs, Room for Debate. They cite the Fordham Institute’s AP report (released earlier this year), and they pose a few key questions: “Does the growth in Advanced Placement courses serve students or schools well? Are there downsides to pushing many more students into taking these rigorous courses?” You’ll see on the blog that various experts respond. Please check it out.

And of course, for much more info on this important topic, you can read our AP report, which surveyed AP teachers in public high schools across the country.

“The education-reform debate as we have known it for a generation is creaking to a halt.” So begins a compelling article by Checker in National Affairs. It’s far too in-depth of a piece to summarize adequately here, but I will try nonetheless. Checker argues that the ideas behind the current wave of education reform–standards, testing, choice and the frameworks built around them–are outliving their usefulness. They aren’t misguided, but they’ve been insufficient to “force the rusty infrastructure of American primary and secondary education to undergo meaningful change.” He writes that “[t]he next wave of education policy will therefore need to direct itself toward even more fundamental questions, challenging long-held assumptions about how education is managed, funded, designed, and overseen.” In other words, it will require bold new thinking.

He then examines how we arrived at this point, tracing what happened since the 1983 A Nation At Risk report, and the rise and demise of education reform consensus. At the moment “no one way of thinking about education policy has taken hold,” he writes, describing the fragmentation that currently exists. He continues: “This fragmentation suggests that simply making minor tweaks to longstanding reform concepts will not suffice–and that the time has come to question old assumptions. American education today is faced with the challenge of–and the opportunity for–a serious rethinking from the ground up.”
There’s much more to chew on and I’m not quite sure I’m doing it justice here. It’s a piece that should definitely be read. Please do.

–Amy Fagan

Interesting event at Brookings yesterday afternoon about media coverage of education. The focus was a paper by Russ Whitehurst, E.J. Dionne and Darrell West that found in the first nine months of 2009 just 1.4 percent of national news coverage from television, newspapers, news Web sites and radio dealt with education.

Breaking down the education coverage that did occur, the most popular topics were school finance/budgets, politics (including the hub-bub over President Obama’s back-to-school speech), H1N1 flu/health and the economic stimulus package. Those are all important. But topics like technology in schools, charter schools and education research were much less popular (each garnered less than 2 percent of education stories). And those are important too.

According to the report it seems local outlets are more likely to cover the substance of school policy than national media. Not surprising since parents particularly care about what’s happening in their kids’ school/district.

The report noted that obviously the tough economic times and the newspaper industry’s struggle with buy-outs and lay-offs has created a very challenging, new environment. Meanwhile blogs and other citizen-initiated reporting have grown in popularity.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that Fordham’s Mike Petrilli has already tackled this topic quite well in Disappearing Ink, a piece he wrote this fall for Education Next and Fordham’s Gadfly newsletter. Please check out Mike’s article.

The Brookings paper makes several recommendations, including urging reporters to draw on education research like health care reporters use medical research, integrating more blogs/citizen journalism into press outlets and encouraging foundations/non-profits to develop alternative forms of education coverage both locally and nationally.

A few other interesting tidbits: Panelist Dale Mezzacappa, president of the Education Writers Association, wisely noted that it would also help the situation if reporters had more access to schools themselves. She said it’s still pretty difficult to get the access needed do the in-depth coverage. And blogger Andy Rotherham, who also was a panelist, said he doesn’t think blogs are the answer. He said they’re great for debate, harnessing the wisdom of crowds, spreading the word about research, etc., but they’re not a replacement to newspaper coverage.

All in all a good discussion about an important issue.

-Amy Fagan

Interesting new column here by Jay Mathews. In it, he writes that striving to turn around chronically low-achieving schools is “a noble quest I have long supported. But I have come to wonder if it might be a big waste of time and money. Most efforts to save such places have been failures. Why not just close them down and start fresh? Why kill ourselves trying to root out the bad habits of failing schools?” He then goes on to cite and discuss (at some length) Andy Smarick’s recent article in Education Next, “The Turnaround Fallacy.” Andy is a distinguished visiting fellow here at Fordham. All in all, it’s a discussion that’s definitely worth checking out….

What child hasn’t shrieked with glee upon hearing that it’s a “snow day” and school is closed? While it may be fun to sleep longer and go sledding, here’s an article in Education Next that looks at the actual impact of missed instructional days on student learning.

Dave E. Marcotte, public policy professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Benjamin Hansen, research associate at IMPAQ International, LLC, compared how Maryland and Colorado schools fared on state tests both in years when there were frequent snow days and in years when there were not. Among their findings, the percentage of students passing math assessments falls by about one-third to one-half a percentage point for each day school is closed.

In the Ed Next article, Marcotte and Hansen summarize their research as well as the research of others regarding instructional days (Hansen also has written a post on the Ed Next blog). They argue that “this emerging body of research suggests that expanding instructional time is as effective as other commonly discussed education interventions intended to boost learning.” They write that “evidence is mounting that expanding instructional time will result in real learning gains.”

They do acknowledge that the cost of extending the school year is a concern. And they discuss how “expanding instructional time offers both opportunities and hazards” for the accountability movement.

All in all an interesting read and worth checking out …

Photograph by Jeff Sandquist from Flickr

Great discussion yesterday at our national standards event. Here’s an article in Education Week that highlights some of it. Much interest in what was said by panelist Dane Linn of the National Governors Association (a group that is, of course, helping to spearhead the Common Core State Standards Initiative). The article notes that Linn gave updates on how the process is going – including that a draft of the K-12 standards document should be ready by  the middle of next month.

The piece also highlights some comments by panelist Sandy Kress, Texas attorney and former senior education advisor to President Bush, who argued that the standards won’t mean much unless states agree to revamp teacher training and instructional materials, implement good tests and high passing thresholds.

All in all an interesting summary of yesterday’s discussion…….

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is out with a new report today that looks at state achievement levels using the common yardstick of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). Not great news. According to the AP story:

It found that many states deemed children to be proficient or on grade level when they would rate below basic or lacking even partial mastery of reading and math under the NAEP standards.

From the Ed Week story:

Their results suggest that 26 states, between 2005 and 2007, made their standards less rigorous in one or more grade levels or subjects.

Our Amber Winkler shared her thoughts on the matter with both Education Week and the Christian Science Monitor.

Might I just point out that the Fordham Institute actually did a very similar report back in 2007 – the Proficiency Illusion. That report used a Northwest Evaluation Association test as a common yardstick. It too found that “proficiency” varied wildly from state to state, with “passing scores” ranging from the 6^th percentile to the 77^th.

Fordham went even further earlier this year, in the Accountability Illusion. That report examined how state accountability (AYP) rules under the No Child Left Behind Act varied from state to state as well.

Check them both out!

The National Association of Scholars has posted an article that highlights the work Andy Smarick has done tracking the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, the economic stimulus).

Andy’s two reports in the series, "Education Stimulus Watch ," were published by the American Enterprise Institute, where he’s an adjunct fellow (he’s also a distinguished visiting fellow here at Fordham of course!). The reports analyze ARRA’s key education components and why they might not deliver and track ARRA’s contribution to the three points of reform : Recovery-First Funds, the Race to the Top program, improvements in state education policies. NAS also highlights an AEI blog post Andy did this week regarding ARRA. He has written a few Flypaper posts on the subject as well.

Congrats to Andy on his interesting work! The NAS article states: "We applaud Smarick’s work in providing accountability for how the education funds of the stimulus bill are being allocated, and we look forward to reading his findings in the next report."

This NY Times article highlights some folks who took alternative routes to become teachers, leaving their primary careers or retirement to complete fast-track programs into the classroom. One of programs mentioned is the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE). Ron Halverson, 52 retired after several years in engineering and finance, but then used the ABCTE program to become a special education teacher at a high school in Boise, Idaho, according to the piece. And Bill DeLoach, 59, worked in business sales and management but left that, completed the ABCTE in science and now teaches high school physics in St. Louis. Among the other programs mentioned in the piece is Career Switchers, based in Virginia.

If you missed last week’s coverage of our new report on national education standards, check out this Washington Post article from today. It cites our report (entitled Stars By Which to Navigate? Scanning National and International Education Standards in 2009 ).

Our new report is discussed in two interesting articles—one in the Washington Post and one in Education Week. Check them out. And to read our report directly, click here.

Schools and non-profits can get extra stimulus dollars, Libby Quaid of the AP reported this afternoon. The Department of Ed today issued rules for a $650 million competitive grant fund for school reform, according to the piece. It’s part of the $5 billion in stimulus funds to help overhaul schools — most of that money goes to states but $650 million will go directly to non-profits and school districts. It’s intended to promote fresh ideas and help smaller programs grow, according to the report, and school districts, colleges/universities, charter schools and companies that help turn around failing schools are all eligible. The DOE plans to accept proposals in the spring, awarding the money by September 30, 2010, the AP reported.

Here’s a recent interview with Fordham Institute’s Andy Smarick about NCLB prospects and the administration. It ran this week on Ednews.org.

CATO is hosting an event this Friday that will seek to answer the question: Can the Nation’s Best Charter Schools Be Brought to Scale? More details here, but the book forum will feature Ben Chavis, founder of the American Indian Public Charter School and author of Crazy Like a Fox, along with Washington Post Columnist Jay Mathews, whose book Work Hard, Be Nice tells the story of the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP).

CATO says the event will be “a conversation about two of America’s most striking models of educational excellence, and the prospects for bringing them to a mass audience.” Andrew Coulson will moderate. Coulson is director of Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom and author of Market Education: The Unknown History.

The event sounds quite interesting. And…….if you’re looking for more info on both the American Indian Public Charter and KIPP, check out Fordham’s book Sweating the Small Stuff, published last year. It includes chapters about both!

On his School Law blog this week, Ed Week’s Mark Walsh reviews the new book “From Schoolhouse to Courthouse ”–published earlier this month by Fordham and Brookings Institution Press. The book’s chapters “hit all the hot-button issues in education law,” and are “generally on target in their emphases and analyses,” Walsh writes, though he feels they lack perspective from civil rights practitioners and related folks. Walsh would “heartily recommend the book for anyone with an interest in school law.”

Check out the full review here . And find more info about the book here and here .