Five Best Blogs: Defending Duncan - Defending AYP Ratings

Obama Shows Spunk Pushing Brave Education Plan Jonathan Alter: It’s a different kind of local control and a different vision of accountability than we’ve seen before.

Yes Virginia… Eduwonk:  Is it really so surprising that when a law comes along that requires the use of disaggregated data – so overall averages can’t obscure big pockets of low-performance – 60 percent of schools need to do better? 

Proficient in Texas, but not in Missouri Joanne Jacobs: A Tennessee eighth grader could be considered proficient without being able to read a graph, while a Massachusetts student meeting the proficiency benchmark “would likely be able to solve a math problem using algebra and geometry.”

Lawmakers outsource duties to ALEC Midwest Voices:  In Missouri, House Majority Leader Tim Jones... sponsored a bill called the “parent trigger act.”

The Internet Is Making It Hard For Teens to Have Fun Atlantic: In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that students can be disciplined for bad behavior outside of school, "so long as the school can prove the activities were disruptive or posed a danger and that it was foreseeable the activities would find their way to campus," the AP explains.

Etsy Saves Your Freshman Year with Indie School Supplies: Chances are you’re not into rainbow tigers anymore, and you might not have much use for a new box of crayons in Sociology 101. But that doesn’t mean you don’t still want a cool new notebook. 

Comments

[Sandra]

"We won’t know until September exactly what Duncan will demand of states in exchange for granting them waivers, but the price is likely to resemble the requirements imposed by Race to the Top, the competition launched by the Department of Education in 2009 that has inspired a flowering of reform across the country."
Too many and for far too long, expensive, ineffective federal initiatives have been forced on the nation's schools. There is no "spunk" in demanding something in exchange for a waiver. Such demands ignore the school children. Waive the ridiculous rule, that should never have passed in the first place..period. I don't know what rose colored glasses ed reformers wear to believe that there is a "flowering of reform across the country." Given the massive funding cuts and expensive demands and unfunded mandates, there is a growth of weeds and huge dry patches.