AM News: Patty Murray's Big, Bold Literacy Push

Murray's literacy plan a test of clout EdWeek:  Murray is staking her power in Congress behind a bill that would authorize nearly $12 billion over five years to help students from preschools to high schools to read better... A Less-Publicized School Plan from Mitch Daniels EdWeek:  The Republican governor signed into law a measure, HB1074, that will require that elections for those boards be held in the fall, rather than the spring... Mom in Conn. school residency case heads to court: Defense attorneys are asking a Connecticut judge to dismiss charges against a homeless single mother accused of stealing nearly $16,000 in schooling by enrolling her son in the wrong school district... School Residency Cases Raise Fairness Questions AP:  McDowell and Williams-Bolar are low-income black single mothers, a fact that disturbs civil rights activists who question whether they are being singled out unfairly... Obama Will Give Booker T. Washington High Commencement EdWeek:  The school has had a jump in its grad rate lately, according to the White House press release, increasing from 55 percent in 2007 to 81.6 percent in 2010... Lady Gaga, Robin Hood Raise $47 Million for Poor, Veterans Bloomberg via Whitney Tilson:  The Robin Hood Foundation gala, Wall Street’s largest single-evening fundraising event, had Lady Gaga onstage and took in $47.4 million last night at its annual New York dinner... Pastorek Expected to Resign as Louisiana Schools Chief EdWeek:  Paul Pastorek is reportedly set to resign as Louisiana's state superintendent of education, concluding a tenure marked by aggressive policy changes and occasional controversy... LAYOFF STUFF BELOW

 New to Teaching, Idealistic, at Risk for Layoff NYT:  Many of the teachers who would be laid off under the mayor’s budget are idealists who had been beckoned to some of the most challenging classrooms... 2 sides want a say in Nevada teacher firing bill AP:  Union representatives are trying to soften two Democrat-sponsored Nevada bills making it easier to fire underperforming teachers, saying the bills don't do enough to protect employees from rash dismissals... Groups take to the airwaves to attract teachers AP:  A pair of television ads designed to persuade more people to pick teaching as a career were unveiled Tuesday in three states set to lose half of their teachers in the next decade... Conn. gov issues layoff notices amid labor talks AP:  Connecticut's Democratic governor increased the pressure Tuesday on state employee unions to agree to $2 billion in concessions and other savings over two years and began issuing the first of more than 4,700 layoff notices to workers... 

Comments

[Bruce]

Substandard literacy is a real problem, but Patty Murray's bill is probably the wrong solution. It's not clear (from the article) how the program would avoid the troubles that afflicted the Bush Administration's program efforts--the misallocation of funds into programs for indefensible reasons--and the timing is particularly challenging, given Boehner's insistence that Obama cut two trillion dollars from spending in order to get an increase in the federal debt limit. Compare this with the work of Bill Ouchi, which shows that allowing empowered principals to make spending decisions, which are usually most effective when lowering each teacher's total student load, is a much better way of allocating education dollars.