Pedagogy Or Politics -- What Makes A "Real" Education Story?

A week after the fact, Richard Lee Colvin finally posts something about Reading First (here). Really getting into the blogging spirit, he mocks my (admitted) over-enthusiasm for the RF story and (mysteriously) my Beltway credentials, and then lectures us about whole language, the National Reading Panel, etc.

He cites the pros and cons of whole language, debunks the notion that RF is as prescriptive as some see it to be, and yet is delightfully polite in refusing to name Diana Jean Schemo, the NYT reporter who wrote the story he's criticizing (below right). Clearly, Colvin could have written this story much better than anyone.

Where I have real issue with Colvin, though, is this notion that Schemo's story needed to be more about classroom instruction, to appeal to narrow reader interests (specifically to "parents of children learning to read"), and to be less about the politics of the situation.

Ideally, the story could have been about all these things, of course, and to be sure Schemo seems to have gotten some things wrong, but people read stories that don't involve them directly all the time, and in this case the scandal and the politics are the story. Nobody would be reading it -- or assigning it -- without them. And that's OK.

In my mind, at least, education reporters need to understand the non-instructional issues (power, politics, money, ideology) in order to have any chance of understanding what they're observing in schools and classrooms and finding real avenues to change.

Previous posts: Colvin Joins The Blogosphere: A Hearty Welcome & Some Unsolicited Advice, Journalism Guru Richard Lee Colvin On The HotSeat, Education Writers: Who's Who -- And Where Are They Now?

The Magazines Take On Education Issues

For better or worse, the national weeklies (Time, Newsweek, USNews) occasionally take on education issues. Here are a couple of this week's offerings, both interesting:

Is a Top School Forcing Out Low-Performing Students? Time
Jasmine Boulware was forced to leave Myers Park High School in February 2005 because the school did not believe she was performing well. She was subsequently told that she could not return. Via CJC.

States Lax in Overseeing NCLB Tutoring US News
More than two thirds of states told CEP they have a tough time monitoring SES programs for quality and effectiveness, and three said they are 'not at all' able to monitor them.

The Coming Pre-K Quality Crunch

As I've said before, it seems to me that there is just too much hype and too much growth in state preK programs -- leading to a bandwagon mentality and an almost inevitable quality crunch:

Many states don’t track pre-K students AP
Fourteen years ago, Georgia launched a publicly funded pre-kindergarten program, the first in the nation to offer free classes to all 4-year-olds. But don’t ask state officials for data on how many of those students graduated from high school and went on to college this past fall. They didn’t keep track. Via CJC.

New National Report on State Pre-K Gets Covered Early Stories
The fourth annual report from the National Institute on Early Education Research came out this week and it generated some good stories around the country.

Previous posts: Pre-K On The Cheap In FLA...And Elsewhere?, What To Do About Universal Pre-K?.

Friday Morning News (March 16)

Seattle Offers Lessons in Bridging Achievement Gap NPR
In Seattle, the public school system's efforts to bridge that gap, despite limited resources, offer a window into the challenges facing school districts across the country.

No Child Left Behind law faces change AP
Key Democrats who control the federal purse strings are demanding changes. Moderate Republicans say the law must be more flexible. Yesterday, they were joined by dozens of GOP conservatives who want an even more radical overhaul.

Teacher’s Sex Trial Focuses on Etiquette Questions NYT
A jury was asked to ponder some etiquette questions in the statutory rape trial of a private school principal and teacher accused of having sex with two of her students.

American Educator Spring 2007

Lots of good stuff in the Spring issue of the AFT's American Educator, including:

Get Real: Children from low-income homes are academically behind when they enter kindergarten. To reach the same achievement level as their better-off peers, they will need to learn much more—and they will need to learn it faster. Here's how we can help meet that challenge.

In the Zone: In Miami, the union and the district have partnered to create a "School Improvement Zone" that gives the district's lowest-scoring schools the increased attention they need.

Micro-Donations Go Macro

DonorsChoose, the innovative online outfit that matches up small donors (often individuals) with classroom projects, is going national this year, having experienced tremendous growth and success in Chicago, New York, and...some other places. Click below for some of my previous posts (from the old blog). Iif any of you have any experiences or thoughts about DC, feel free to weigh in. Congrats to the DCers. Keep on making the old school education foundations sweat.

The Perils Of Being Against NCLB

Love him or hate him, Rush Limbaugh's got an infuriatingly good way with rhetoric, as illustrated by his riff on the idea of rolling back NCLB:

"So they're out there lobbying Congress to reduce this 100% target and delay the 2014 deadline," according to Rush Limbaugh ( Democrats Demand We Leave Some Kids Behind). "I'll make a deal with them. I'll be glad to make a deal. I'll say, "Fair enough. So we can stop with this 100% healthcare coverage, then, for every child in America?...Well, let's eliminate the whole goal of 100% elimination of poverty. And how about this? Let's eliminate this whole notion of a hundred percent carbon neutral footprints. You guys want to play a game, I'll be glad to."

What Can You Learn From SEC Filings For Education Companies?

I'm not sure I get exactly what all the hullaballoo is about The Princeton Review's selling off one of its subsidiaries, as chronicled in this Insider Higher Ed story from last week (MyRichUncle's Under-the-Radar Buy), but I love knowing where education companies' SEC filings are, and what they look like (they're linked in the story). I'd actually never seen one before. Not that I can make heads or tails of this one -- an 8-K it's called -- but still. Anyone know if these filings are posted or kept anywhere central, or if they ever have interesting information in them?

UPDATE: A kind and very well-placed insider says that you can find SEC filings here.

Thursday Morning News (March 15)

Dozens in GOP Turn Against Bush's Prized 'No Child' Act Wash Post
More than 50 GOP members of the House and Senate -- including the House's second-ranking Republican -- will introduce legislation today that could severely undercut President Bush's signature domestic achievement, the No Child Left Behind Act, by allowing states to opt out of its testing mandates.

Have Your Children Been to the Library? Wall Street Journal
Countless adults have fond memories of the day they received their first library card. But many children today have a far different relationship with their library -- if they go there at all.

National Network Aims to Recraft Ed.D. for Practitioners Ed Week
Responding to long-standing complaints about the relevance of Ed.D. degrees, nearly two dozen colleges and universities have joined a new network aimed at creating doctoral programs in education that are geared more for practitioners than for professional scholars.

Teacher loses $2 million witchcraft lawsuit CNN.com
Read full story for latest details.

Reading First Defenders, Unite

Over at Ednews.org, Jimmy Kilpatrick has collected a bunch of Responses to NYT Reading First article, most of them defending the program or questioning DJ Schemo's reporting, including from Reid Lyon, Bob Sweet, Tim Shanahan, and others. The gist of what they're saying isn't much of a surprise -- they're trying to salvage the program -- but some of the details in the letters to the Times are quite interesting.

However, there's a new DJ Schemo article in the Times out this morning that describes Congressional criticism of the program, a Spellings mea culpa of sorts, and the much-anticipated testimony of Bob Slavin, who seems to represent the wronged party (not districts or schools, for some reason): Oversight Is Set for Beleaguered US Reading Program. It's not quite an Alberto Gonzalez-level mess, but it's a mess. Can't someone find a better example than Madison, though?

Sen. Alexander Reaches Out To Education Bloggers

Watch out, mainstream education reporters. The bloggers are catching up with you.

Earlier today, Senator Lamar Alexander might have been the first US Senator to reach out specifically to a group of education bloggers. The half-hour telephone press conference focused on Alexander's America Competes Act (PDF) and NCLB. About 10 bloggers participated, and it mostly ran like a "normal" press conference -- people asking questions based on their interests and concerns as much as anything else, no big news made. [Alexander still sounds PO'd about the TIF funding having been blocked, and has that politicians' habit of referring to long-ago events.]

Substantively, it's pretty interesting that Alexander and others got the authorizing and appropriating committee heads to sign off and let the bill go straight to the floor, effectively bypassing NCLB and HEA reauthorization processes. That doesn't happen that often. However, it'll be a miracle if the proposal doesn't attract a lot of amendments and gets through the House and into law, popular as "competitiveness" may be. And then of course it's mostly about appropriations after that.

Best Blog Posts Of The Week

The 110th carnival of education blogs is up and open for business over at The Education Wonks, including some interesting posts about where education fits into the Presidential campaign.

Schmoozing The New Guy

Reporters who are new to the education beat have several challenges in front of them, including learning a ton of new information, figuring out how to get and keep their editor's and readers' attention, and figuring out who's who and who to trust in the education world -- all the while being schmoozed and pitched by everyone in town.

Taken together, the challenges are not unlike arriving late to a party, trying to figure out who's friends with whom and what's being discussed around the room, and then having to report out accurately what happened when you get home.

That's exactly the situation that relative newcomers like Amit Paley at the Post found himself in at yesterday's NCLB hearing. What to make of that big mess?

Half a day later, some of the preliminary reviews are in. Ever optimistic, the AFT Blog butters Paley up with this post (Lightning and lightning bugs), praising him for making clear in his piece that the AFT and NEA are different organizations and sometimes have different views. Over at Eduwonk, Andy Rotherham mixes praise and criticism in his post (2014palooza!), noting that several of the criticisms Paley reports regarding the 100 percent proficiency goal are not as ridiculous or problematic as they are presented.

I agree with both points, but would add that Paley's piece does a good job of exploring how the rhetoric of 100 percent has stymied opponents for so long (and, implicitly, that they should just give up on this), gets in some good quotes -- Kennedy admitting that 100 percent isn't achievable and everyone knows it, and gives some new examples of schools that have achieved 100 proficiency. He's learning, he'll get it.

But then again I'm probably just schmoozing Paley, too.

Dissecting The NCLB Hearing

Below are some more responses to the NCLB hearing, both first-hand (delicious!) and via the papers (more ideological).

Who cares what anyone else has to say, though -- we want to know what jumped out at you, or seemed interesting or strange or funny about who spoke, what they said, how the members responded, or who was in the audience?

NCLB Hearing Coverage: A Long, Boring Hearing?

There aren't many big differences in how media folks covered yesterday's hearing that I can see -- it sounds like a long, boring hearing -- but here they are:

'No Child' target is called out of reach Washington Post
In Virginia, schools have achieved universal proficiency on reading and math tests 45 times since 2002, officials said.

Congress Gets an Earful on No Child Left Behind NPR
Members of the House and Senate asked concerned citizens Tuesday for ideas on how to improve the No Child Left Behind education law — and they got an earful.

'No Child' education act under review Washington Times
Mr. Barnes' commission called for the creation of voluntary national standards, while Elizabeth Burmaster, president of the Council of Chief State School Officers, argued for less federal intrusion and more autonomy for states. "Give me some more flexibility," she said.

Changes to No Child Left Behind requested Gannett
The No Child Left Behind Act, with its controversial emphasis on testing students and its often-unpopular punishment of schools that don't show steady progress, isn't going away anytime soon.

Wednesday Morning News (March 14th)

Report: More kids in state preschools USA Today
But while many states are spending more, the larger enrollment, combined with inflation, means that overall, states are actually spending less per student in constant dollars — $3,482 last year vs. $4,171 in 2002.

A Teacher’s Adventurous Life, Distilled Into an Unlikely Book NYT
“The Mountain Man’s Field Guide to Grammar" is the brainchild of a man who loved to write, but hated learning the rules.

Teenager’s Science Project Wins $100,000 Scholarship NYT
Mary Masterman, a senior at Westmoore High School in Oklahoma City, won the top prize of a $100,000 scholarship in the Intel Science Talent Search by building a spectrograph for $300.

Black-Hispanic Tensions On Display In Chicago Local Control Crisis

About six weeks ago, I started getting emails and comments about a conflict between the African-American principal of one of the city's high schools and the Latino head of the local school council, which is in charge of hiring principals in Chicago, on my Chicago blog, District 299.

Since then, the Curie crisis has been just about all anyone wants to read or comment on at the site, and the turmoil finally burst onto the front pages of the city's newspapers last week when the local council voted to oust the principal and the Mayor intervened -- unsuccessfully so far -- to get that decision overturned.

What makes this more than just a Chicago story is that, at a time when cities like New York are going back to some forms of school-based governance, the Curie situation illustrates just how difficult "local control" can be, just how messy representative democracy is (whether it's a school council or a condo board), the shift from black-white tensions to black-Hispanic ones, and the mixed blessings of having a mayor who's nominally in charge of the city's schools but whose superintendent still can't pick and choose principals.

House Hearing Video On Demand

This whole Internet thing is getting better and better for those of us who want to know what's going on without going to DC or sitting in a hot hearing room. Check out this CPSAN video from yesterday's House Labor-HHS-Education spending hearing, featuring Obey and Spellings, and let me know if they said anything interesting. Maybe they'll do the same thing on the Senate side, too.

Views Of NCLB, Pro And (Mostly) Con

Morton Kondracke: No Child Left Behind deserves renewal Examiner
There’s reason to hope that Congress will reauthorize, extend and improve the landmark 2001 NCLB Act school-accountability law. But, by itself, the federal program is clearly not going to solve America’s education crisis.

NCLB Has Flunked Chicago Defender
Is the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) working? If it isn't working, will it succeed by the 2014 deadline? The answers to both of these questions, unfortunately, are no.

Outside the Beltway View of NCLBAFT Blog
It's true that failing an NCLB-mandated tests doesn't necessarily mean a student will be held back or given an F. But this impassioned, informed, unsolicited comment should put to rest the idea that NCLB's tests aren't sometimes "high-stakes tests" for children.

Then, as if to prove its critics right, there's NCLB's new, "bloody claw marks" logo. Or are those marks just meant to represent declining NAEP scores?

High School Student Council Passes Nonbinding Resolution

'In a move intended to send an "unmistakably clear message" to Barstow County High School Principal Robert McCluskey, the school's student council approved by a vote of 22-3 during seventh period Monday a nonbinding resolution criticizing the principal's recent decision to install three extra hall monitors.' From The Onion (High School Student Council Passes Nonbinding Resolution).

Tuesday Morning News (March 13)

School District Asks Teachers to Return Pay AP
A total of about $75,000 was overpaid because a computer program mistakenly calculated the bonuses of part-time workers.

OPRAH'S SCHOOL 'TOO STRICT' News 24.com via EdNews.org
The rules at Oprah Winfrey's ultra-posh school at Henley-on-Klip near Johannesburg are apparently so strict they make a reformatory look like a holiday resort.

Group To Offer AP Exam Extra Credit: $250 Washington Post
The Advanced Placement program has long offered college credit to high school students who show mastery of a subject. Now, a group of educators and business executives plans to dangle another incentive in front of AP students and teachers in selected schools across the country: $250 for each passing score on science, English and math tests.

Slavin Set To Slam Reading First At House Hearing

It's all about events this week, I guess. Now the House has a Labor-HHS-Education appropriations hearing scheduled for Wednesday, and -- wowza -- they're having Bob Slavin (ie, the wronged party under Reading First) testify. Should be fun.

"The Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee will hold a hearing on "Federal Funding for the No Child Left Behind Act." Witnesses: Margaret Spellings; secretary of Education; Jack Jennings, president and CEO, Center on Education Policy; Paul Vallas, CEO, the School District of Philadelphia, PA; Jane Babcock, superintendent, Keokuk Community School District, Keokuk, IA; Gene Wilhoit, executive director, Council of Chief State School Officers; and Robert Slavin, director, Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. Time and Location: 2:30 p.m.; 124 Dirksen SOB. Contact: 202.224.7363." From USDE via AACTE.

House Back To The Drawing Board On Higher Ed?

Uh oh. That's what it sounds like from this letter (PDF) from the big four on the House side. It's basically a call for input from stakeholders. Didn't we do that already? Or doesn't the whole Spellings Commission thing count? If not, I guess I can chuck my Aspen Institute report, too.

Who's Got The Best Education Events Calendar?

I find it hard to keep track of when things are happening in the education world -- hearings, conferences, report releases, etc. -- and have yet to find the perfect solution (ie, a calendar that not only includes just the big events I'm interested in, but is customizable and updates automatically into Outlook or Google calendars).

I'm told that the EdWeek calendar is pretty good, and that seems to be true but there's almost too much there (and no mention of Congress or USDE schedules, for this week at least, or of ASCD starting this weekend in Anaheim). As recently noted, AACTE claims to have a good list going for hearings and the like, which I appreciate. Though, again, no mention of the Secty's speech on higher ed tomorrow and no events past this week. Someone recently told me about the Peter Li calendar (see here), which has an interesting set of events including ASCD this weekend but nothing in DC.

I guess there's nothing perfect -- or is there? If you know of a better way to keep tabs on what's happening and what's coming up, let us know.

Denigrating Teachers...Or Just Disagreeing?

There's a post called The Deciders over at Teacher In A Strange Land that takes me to task for a variety of things, including belittling the experiences and advice of teachers when it comes to NCLB: "When did it get to be OK, even kind of hip, to denigrate the professional work, judgment and thinking of educators?"

True, I am not always respectful of teachers' views on NCLB, but that's not any more denigrating in my mind than it would be to say that doctors shouldn't be the sole arbitors of Medicare policies (which they shouldn't). The experiences and perspectives of practitioners and clinicians (teachers, doctors) are by their nature vivid, detailed, and limited. But saying so doesn't, in my mind at least, denigrate them.

The post to which this is a response is here.

Hearings & Meetings Schedule -- Tomorrow & Beyond

Don't forget -- there are two reasonably big events tomorrow in DC.

The NCLB event, sponsored by the big four (Miller, Kennedy, McKeon, and Enzi) includes as witnesses mostly the usual suspects. The hearing, titled “Elementary and Secondary Education Act Reauthorization: Improving NCLB to Close the Achievement Gap,” will be held in room 2175 of the Rayburn House Office Building on Tuesday, March 13, 2007, at 9:30 a.m. Click at bottom to read the members' pull quotes.

It's interesting to note that while there is no one from the USDE that is on the scheduled witness list, Spellings herself is scheduled to show up at an event later the same day called "Higher Education after the Spellings Commission: An Assessment." At the Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI, 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.

And yes, there's a decent list of upcoming events at the AACTE events page (AACTE), which I'm glad to know about. Now if it only had an RSS feed (hint, hint).

Monday Morning News (March 12)

Bush Claims About NCLB Questioned EdWeek
The student-achievement results the president recently cited are from a single subsection of the National Assessment of Educational Progress and tentative Reading First data.

Some parents pay to pull kids out of class for trips CNN
Tired of parents pulling their kids out of school for a ski trip or a visit to Disneyland, one local school system is billing them for the missed class time at $36.13 per day.

Modern-Day 3 R's: Rules, Rules, Rules Wash Post
At Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, students can't just randomly stroll out to their cars to fetch a textbook or some other forgotten item. They need a pass because authorities worry about what might be stashed in the parking lot.

Best Of The Week (March 5-12)

Best Of The Week
Reading First Finally Makes It As A Mainstream News Story--But Does the NYT Get It Right?

Campaign 2008
Obama and The Annenberg Challenge -- Is EdWeek Reaching?
Education's Walter Reed Scandal

Teaching & Learning
The Focused Discomfort Of Learning
Disaggregating Students, Not Just Test Scores

NCLB News
Hearing-Palooza
What To Do About Negative NCLB Stories? Not Much.
Everyone's Favorite NCLB Angles All In One Place

Around The USDE
Beware The Ides Of March (March 13 Events)
USDE's Kerri Briggs Moves Up -- Again

Think Tanks
How To Tell All The Reports Apart
Watch -- Don't Read -- Your Education News
The New Education Next

Media Watch
Meet Larry Abramson, NPR's "New" Education Guy
Cool Features On The New USA Today Education Page
Blog Roundup: Best Of The Week (Partial Listing)
The Fly-Blast: Best of The NewsBlast and the Gadfly

School Life
Booing, Pizza, & The "V-Word"
What To Do About New Orleans?