Security Checks For USDE Researchers: You Heard It Here First

Halfway through January, I wrote about how researchers were being asked to go through unnecessary-seeming security clearances to work on USDE projects (see here).

Less than a month later, the NYT runs a piece about the situation (Critics Question Education Department’s Screening), which has since ballooned into a mini-uprising on the part of researchers who refuse to participate. Thanks to the researcher who originally brought this to my attention. If someone has a copy of the letter to Spellings, please share it.

MySpace For Educators

It's not just teens, college kids, and business types who want to connect. If you combined LinkedIn, the professional networking site, with Teach For America, Wendy Kopp's effort to get elite college grads to teach in low income schools and take over the world, then you'd have LinkEd, a new organization based in New York and started by a couple of TFAers. They're having an event in NY on Tuesday, and they're already hooked up with DonorsChoose.

Mesecar (& Others) On The Move

After two years heading Edison's DC outpost, Doug Mesecar is headed back to the USDE for more punishment. Previously, he was Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. He's going to be Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Office of Policy, Planning and Evaluation to work for recent nominee Bill Evers. (Eduwonk on Evers here: It's Official, It's Evers.)

In other Edison news, current deputy New York City schools chancellor and former Edison president Chris Serf is coming under fire in the Times: Schools Official Deflects Query About Stocks NYT

Meanwhile, the FritzWire reports that Bob Stonehill who managed 21st Century Communities Schools will be retiring from the Department next month and is heading to Learning Points. Fritz calls him "Another difficult person to replace given his experience and historical knowledge."

A One-Month Anniversary At My New "Home"

It's been roughly a month now since I've been here on EdWeek.org, and so far, so good, it seems. Thanks to everyone who's bravely checked out the site for the first time -- and all of you longtime readers, thanks for making the move.

Thanks also to the EdWeek.org folks for putting up with my incessant demands -- if I was a real employee you'd have fired me by now. Aren't you glad I'm not?

To register any complaints, questions, or compliments, email me at thisweekineducation at gmail.com. Or, slap a comment in the comments section. Remember, you can sign up for a weekly email in the box to the right.

Friday News: Where's Teacher?

"Students at Adams Middle School have been feverishly speculating about the true circumstances surrounding seventh grade history teacher Mr. Benson's unannounced second-semester leave of absence—now approaching one month—raising the mysterious disappearance well into the status of legend among the student body at large," according to this article from, yes, The Onion (Teacher's Leave Of Absence Shrouded In Legend). "I heard he was a pot addict, and he went mental, and they took him away to a mental institution," said Gregory Oswald, 13, a student of Benson's, adding that he remembered noticing a growing impatience in Mr. Benson in the weeks before Christmas break. "Someone told me that the first night he was there, they shocked his brain. Now he can't remember anything about the Civil War."

The Gad-Blast: Best Of The Gadfly & The NewsBlast

If you've been reading along this week, you've already seen most of what the weekly newsletters have to say.  But there are some new things, too.

At the PEN NewsBlast, there are posts about financial inequalities in Illinois, more about the FY08 budget, some things from the TC Record (which I never seem to get to), an English-only pledge of allegiance, more about NCLB and gifted students, and a fascinating little article about just how hard school boards (and board members) are to contact.

Over at The Gadfly, they're looking for fellows, fighting against fatalism, railing against What Works, and... I got nothing.  Oh, they pick up the item I highlighted earlier this week about what happens when teachers' performance bonuses go public. 

Morning Round-up February 9, 2007

A little bit of Enron in all of us? JS Online
Lynn Brewer, the former Enron Corp. executive who blew the whistle on corrupt practices at the energy giant, delivered a chilling message about wrongdoing in corporate America to the 800 students, faculty and members of the public who came to hear her speech Thursday at Marquette University.

Schools Picked to Pilot Sex-Ed Lessons WaPo
Should the pilot program go forward, it would mark the first time sexual orientation has been addressed directly in eighth- and 10th-grade county health classes.

Gender Gap in GPAs Seen as Linked to Self-Discipline EdWeek
What may have gotten lost in the conversation, suggests Angela Lee Duckworth, a research associate in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, are gender differences in an area that has attracted little research attention over the years: the old-fashioned attribute of self-discipline.

Dropouts In Baghdad

"When Senator John Kerry said last fall that students who didn’t do well in school were more likely to “get stuck in Iraq,” he was immediately attacked for insulting the intelligence of U.S. troops," according to this Harper's Magazine article (Kerry Was Right). "Of course, Kerry’s comment was entirely accurate—not because American soldiers in Iraq are dumb, but because the Pentagon, in seeking to overcome serious recruiting shortfalls, has enlisted growing numbers of high school dropouts."

Felons, too, according to CNN's Paris Hilton Anderson Cooper -- but of course that's someone else's problem.

What To Do About Teacher Quality?

The teacher quality provisions of NCLB are some of the most important -- and least effectively implemented -- provisions of the law, and there's more than enough blame to go around for all the delays, gimmicks, and obfuscation that's taken place.

However, the Center on Education Policy has some answers, based on meetings held in the fall, about what to do the next time around. They include encouraging states to develop performance-based certification measures and more nuance in the definitions of HQT, incentives to address equity, and better data systems.

It's core, achievable stuff -- some of it too tame, but none of it unimportant. There's lots that can be done short of undoing collective bargaining agreements.

UPDATE: AFT Michele suggests that there's less consensus there than meets the eye. She sees a big divide between those who want to improve working conditions generally and those who want to focus on incentives for hard to staff schools. Working conditions? Seriously? Sometimes I think the AFTies flip a coin every day to decide whether they're going to be progressive or reactionary. Either that, or the AFT bigwigs have no idea what Michele and John et al are up to (which would be sorta great).

UPDATE 2: Apparently it's working conditions in hard to staff schools that Michele is talking about, not in general. OK, that helps. But I still don't see such a big disagreement as she does.

Advanced Placement To The Rescue

Long ago and far away, I helped NM Senator Jeff Bingaman get the federal AP incentive fund funded -- the first national effort at subsidizing the costs of AP exams for low-income kids. But things have changed a lot since then, and it's interesting to compare everyone's coverage of the annual Advanced Placement report. Everyone covers it differently, as you'll see.

UPDATE:

Hooters Saves The Children

Pretty much every company out there has some do-gooder initiative going on these days, whether it's VH1's "Save The Music" campaign or Wal-Mart's "We Really Care" (I made that one up). But who knew that Hooters had one, too? Thanks to eagle-eyed Howie Schaffer from the PEN Newsblast, now we do:

"Hooters Restaurants "Wings for Children" program is underway once again at all Chicago area locations, raising money for the Holy Family Lutheran School through proceeds from the sales of their world famous chicken wings. In 2005, Hooters raised $33,000 for the school. Almost $170,000 total has been raised since the program's inception in 1995."

Keeping Talent At The USDE

"Out of thirty-six federal agencies surveyed, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ranked dead last on job satisfaction," according to this article in Slate (Department of Homeland Dissatisfaction). DHS also ranked "dead last on being "results-oriented"; second to last on "leadership and knowledge management"; and among the bottom five on "talent management." No word on where the USDE ranked, but I'm eager to find out.

Morning Round-up February 8, 2007

Rural Colleges Seek New Edge and Urbanize NYT
At the same time, officials have realized that a more urbanized version of the ideal campus could attract a population well past its college years — working people and retiring baby boomers — if there is housing to suit them.

Overachieving Students Hear a New Message: Lighten Up WaPo
In a region where the high school experience has evolved into an advanced placement-fueled academic arms race, parents and school officials are starting to do the unthinkable: They're saying no to adolescents who want to load up on AP courses, schedule eight-period days and join the school newspaper, track team and high school band at the same time.

ISTE releases draft of new tech standards eSchool News
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has just completed a draft of its National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for students--a groundbreaking paradigm for what young people should know about technology and what they should be able to do with it before graduating.

Catching Up With NPR

Knowing that many of you like to listen to things while sitting at your desk, I'm trying to keep track of what's going on at NPR and other stations about education.

This latest roundup includes audio segments about the Bush budget proposal, extended time, college diversity, and school safety. Oh, and one about schools over-reacting to lice.

Check it out -- and if I've missed anything, let me know.

EdWeek's Latest Blog

Well, it took less than a month for This Week In Education to lose its standing as EdWeek's newest blog.

But the newbie isn't the Ravitch-Meiers confab that many of us have been expecting. Instead, its a blog focused on ELL called Learning the Language, written by EdWeek assistant editor Mary Ann Zehr.

Congrats, condolences, and welcome.

"Scoundrels" At The USDE?

Thanks to a friendly reader for passing along this list of Bush administration "scoundrels", which includes an Eric Andell from the USDE who apparently did something wrong related to Safe and Drug Free Schools. Read all about it.

Private Schools & The Poor

Once again, The Atlantic Monthly ($) has a thought-provoking article about education. Last month, it was about New Orleans. The latest is about private schools in other countries that have been set up to educate the very poor -- and the mixed feelings of international aid organizations and others about a private approach to a public problem.

"Cheap private schools are educating poor children across the developing world," begins the piece. "But without much encouragement from the international aid establishment."

In some ways, it reminds me of the Cristo Rey schools here in the US, about which I've written several times -- private schools set up to charge little tuition and aimed at educating first generation and other disadvantaged students. Find a friend or read it at the dentist's office.

When NCLB Opponents Make You Wince

Once in a while, Sherman Dorn and I agree about something, and this is one of those times. "There are plenty of ways I can criticize NCLB and its implementation," writes Dorn in this post (Ugly arguments against NCLB), "but to whine that it drains resources for the gifted is one of the more disturbing arguments I've read (and today's story by Joseph Berger isn't the first time it's appeared in the New York Times)."

Teach For America's Wendy Kopp Survives Colbert

Usually, Steven Colbert (of the Colbert Report) eviscerates his guests by turning their arguments on their heads and asking ridiculous questions. So much so that someone even wrote an article about how to survive a Colbert interview. But as others have noted he took it pretty easy on Teach For America founder Wendy Kopp last night.

Cobert managed to get in a couple of jabs -- that Kopp never actually did what she's asking other folks to do, that Colbert is really the one who's "teaching America," that college grads should be out making money not helping kids, and that there's no use -- some kids just don't want to learn.

It won't be so easy if and when Kopp agrees to be on the HotSeat. Then we'll see what she's really made of. Via TQATE and Eduwonk.

Paige Blames It All On Teachers Unions

Who knew that former EdSec Rod Paige was writing a book? Not I. Who knew it was going to blame pretty much everything on the teachers unions? Again, not I. But apparently that's what he's done.

Called The War Against Hope:How Teacher Unions Hurt Children, Hinder Teachers And Endanger Public Education, "offers the inside story of how teacher unions like the National Education Association (NEA) are selfishly shackling our students to a failing education system, while exposing the bullying techniques that are used to obstruct meaningful reform."

I guess that whole calling the NEA a terrorist organization wasn't a freakish outburst after all.

Morning Round-up February 7, 2006

Advanced Placement Tests Are Leaving Some Behind NYT
More high schools across the nation are offering Advanced Placement courses to help students get into college and get ready for its academic rigors. In the process, however, many minority students who often need help most urgently are missing out.

A positive (top) spin on education CSM
Ranging from third grade to eighth, about 30 students at Confluence Academy's Old North St. Louis campus have recently formed a new sports team, with the help of a volunteer who played competitively in China. One of her first lessons: Please don't call it ping-pong.

Publishers cater to growing use of MP3's for schoolwork CNN.com
Students are using MP3 players more to listen to downloaded books, textbook study guides and language labs on-the-go. A typical 300-page novel might take up 12 CDs, but only a tiny portion of an MP3 player's memory, and prices for audiobook downloads are mostly comparable to audio CDs.

Carnival 105th: The Over-Scheduled Carnival Kid

The first rule of Carnival is to publicize the Carnival. The second rule is to remember that next week the Carnival comes home to The Education Wonks. The deadline for submissions is: 9:00 PM (Eastern) 6:00 PM (Pacific) Tuesday, February 13. Submissions may be sent to: owlshome [at] earthlink [dot] net . Contributers may also use Blog Carnival's handy submission form: http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_5.html

Now, on to this week's Carnival, #105: The Over-Scheduled Carnival Kid. We've all heard a lot about over-worked, over-scheduled kids, and we're here to tell you: it's all true. The Carnival Kid has more classes, meetings, and extracurriculars than most folks can imagine. Let's take a look.

When Performance Pay Goes Public

These days, you can find out what parents think about your teacher, what campaigns your teacher gives to, whether or not he or she's "highly qualified" under NCLB, and -- for the places that have performance pay programs in place -- who's getting a performance bonus.

That's according to this interesting piece in the St. Pete Times. "Thanks to a new bonus plan, we'll know which teachers get the rewards. But what will parents do with that knowledge?" (Via EdNews.org) The day after the teacher info came out in Houston, according to the article, the site got 400,000 hits. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Few Mysteries At Thursday's Hearing NCLB Hearing

Looking at the witness list for Thursday's HELP committee hearing, there aren't a lot of mysteries.

In particular, Chicago's Hosanna Mahaley Johnson, head of the new schools office (and oft-rumored successor to Arne Duncan), is almost certain to support the USDE proposal to bypass state charter caps and allow more conversions.

Under Renaissance 2010, the district's current school turnaround effort, a slew of schools have been closed and opened -- probably more accountability-based closures than anywhere else in the nation -- but the charter cap for the city is stuck at 30 so they can close all they want but can't open charters, which a lot of folks seem to prefer.

Interesting, too, that Mayor Daley sends Mahaley Johnson, not Duncan, and that he has apparently called a halt on school closings this year until after the primary this month. Check District 299 for all the latest on Chicago schools.

More CRS Reports For Free

Don't pay good money for CRS reports -- they're public documents, sort of. And as you may recall from previous posts, many of them you can find online at Open CRS. Today's example: The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA): Overview and Selected Issues.

Best Of The Blogs -- Early Edition

I'm jumping the gun here a little bit, since we're hosting the Carnival Of Education tomorrow, but here are a couple of blog posts that I've been meaning to highlight:

Teacher Pandering Getting Stale? The Chalkboard
Newsweek's Jonathan Alter says it is time for America to stop pandering to teachers, and uses the "hack" word to describe Democratic politicians who engage in the most hard-core bootlicking.

Competition or Criticism How To Best Motivate America's Schools? OUP Blog
Patricia Graham questions the best techniques for reforming America's schools.

Last but not least, you can find a weeklong rumble over various NCLB issues between Dianne Piche, Joel Packer, and Mike Petrilli at edspresso. But we already know who's going to win that debate, don't we? Or at least, who's not going to.

Bush Budget Reactions, Part 2: Dead On Arrival?

This morning, NPR points out what a big difference it makes to the budget process to have a Congressional majority that's not the same party as the occupant of the White House. In the past, the Republican majority would actually receive and make use of the President's budget, perhaps even have helped develop it. This year, the Democratic response is just as negative, and much more empowered. Of course, that leaves the Democrats with the task of coming up with their own budget ideas.

More budget reactions since yesterday:

States feel the pinch of tight federal budget Stateline.org
States would be spared draconian cuts next year under President Bush’s plan to balance the federal budget by 2012, but health, social and other programs important to states still would be squeezed.

The Bush Budget, 2008 Inside Higher Ed
Administration's spending blueprint would increase Pell Grants -- by cutting lender profits and other aid programs.

Morning Round-up February 6, 2007

Supervisors Step Up In 'No Child' Fight WaPo
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors sided with school officials yesterday in a showdown with the Bush administration over the federal No Child Left Behind law, accusing the U.S. Department of Education of having a "tin ear" in its policy toward testing immigrant students.

Coming US challenge: a less literate workforce CSM
The reason: Most baby boomers will be retiring and a large wave of less-educated immigrants will be moving into the workforce. This downward shift in reading and math skills suggests a huge challenge for educators and policymakers in the future, according to a new report from the Educational Testing Service (ETS).

States try mentoring to hang on to teachers Boston Globe
States from Oregon to Connecticut are considering pouring millions of dollars into mentoring programs for new teachers, aiming to stop many educators from spending just a few years in the classroom before leaving for greener, less taxing pastures.

President's Budget Seeks Help for High Schools, But Again Targets Cuts in Many AreasEdWeek
The Bush administration released a fiscal year 2008 budget request today that includes new money to help struggling schools and a renewed push to retool high schools, but would provide less money overall for the U.S. Department of Education than a fiscal year 2007 spending bill approved by the House last week.

Budget Reactions: Not Enough For NCLB

What seems clear already, just hours after the President's budget has been released, is that the funding levels for NCLB and other much-watched programs aren't nearly high enough to win over much Democratic support. On this, the basic go/no go issue, the reaction is "no go."

Not that the Dems really expected anything else. They've been setting it up to slam the President on the budget (and, by extension, NCLB reauthorization) for a couple of weeks now, at least.

Knowing this, the Administration probably figured it couldn't appease the Dems, so why try? It's a Democratic problem now, and the Dems probably won't be able to do much better, funding-wise, given the spending box we're in (now, suddenly, when it's convenient).

What's left is lots of little stuff -- proposed eliminations of medium and small programs that nearly never get eliminated, slightly more fleshed out ideas from the NCLB reauthorization proposal, boutique ideas. (Speaking of which, the TIF funding issue isn't resolved yet. Yikes.)

Over at Eduwonk, Andy bemoans the lack of big ideas (It's Not That It Is Small, It's That It Thinks Small).

Over at the Republican House ed committee site, Buck McKeon reminds everyone how much money has gone into NCLB in the past six years.

UPDATE: Miller and Kildee press release (theme = "not enough") is below.You saw this coming. Senate staff response was posted earlier this AM.

More Newspapers With Education Blogs - Finally

Last summer, I somewhat over-enthusiastically predicted that there would be a big surge in newspapers with education blogs (Everybody On The Blogging Bandwagon).

Well, that didn't pan out exactly, but they're slowly coming on line. And the latest is just started at the St. Petersburg Times in FLA, where Jeff Solocheck is up and running with The Gradebook. Good luck, Jeff! Welcome to the edusphere.

Budget Documents & Democratic Staff Review

Thanks to a kind reader, here are the proposed FY08 education budget levels, plus a handy-dandy review by the Labor-HHS Subcommittee staff.

Terminations

Perkins

NCLB

Subcommittee Analysis

PS: I think this last document isn't up anywhere else. (At least that's what folks are telling me.) If you use it, please link back here rather than snagging the contents and running. Your readers won't mind the extra click.

Morning Round-up February 5, 2007

Nanotechnology inches its way into classrooms WaPo
Recognizing that changing curricula can be next to impossible, the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network is developing and distributing programs aimed at engaging schools in nanoscale science and engineering education, said Carol Lynn Alpert, director of strategic projects at the Museum of Science, Boston, and a co-principal investigator of the network.

California School Under Fire Over Volunteer's Sex Record NYT
He confessed to touching the woman but denied molesting the child. He was convicted of two felony sexual batteries — one for the woman and one for the child — and his sentence of probation was overseen by the authorities in California.

Senate committee debates bill exempting AZ from No Child Left Behind Act Tucson Citizen
The Senate Committee on Education endorsed a bill Wednesday that would allow schools districts and charter schools to opt out of the federal No Child Left Behind Act if they don't receive money from the program.

The Best Of The Week (January 29-February 4)

Best Of The Week
School Reform Hurricane: The Atlantic Monthly's Amy Waldman
What's Going On In The Education Industry?
Please Ma'am -- Step Away From The Blog

On The Hill
The Budget Is Coming, The Budget Is Coming
Federal Education Budget Update
Senate HELP Subcommittee Lineup
Teacher Incentive Fund Nearly Eliminated In Budget Agreement

The Department of Ed
When The EdSec Meets The Blob
Clowns To The Left Of Her, Jokers To The Right
Labor Budget Leaked -- Where's Education's?

NCLB Reauthorization
Quick NCLB Reauthorization Not Looking Likely - Still
The Education Industry & NCLB Reauthorization

Education Policy
Fordham Math Grades Vs. NAEP Math Achievement
Future Forces Affecting Education
Minority 12th Graders Vs. White 8th Graders -- Who Scores Higher?

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