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Education
March 13, 2010

Wurman & Stotsky skewer the proposed national standards

In the past days, the announcements by Minnesota and Virginia that they are most likely not going to adopt the common core standards drove giant holes right through the wall of consensus that the CCSSO and NGA have tried to maintain. Ze’ev...
Education
March 12, 2010

Our Stand on Standards

Seems our report and the release of the common core standards draft have set off a lot of interest in Massachusetts’ view, and especially in Pioneer’s take on the national standards effort. See Jay Greene’s blog for a long string of comments....
Education
March 12, 2010

And now VA takes a pass on national standards

Bob Stuart of the News Virginian reports that now Virginia won’t jump onboard a push for national K-12 standards if it means dumping the state’s standardized test, the governor and other state officials said. … Some of the proposed English and math...
Education
March 12, 2010

Hole punched in national standards effort

As Sam Dillon of the New York Times noted our opposition to the national standards effort because it would weaken the Massachusetts standards. And now the opposition builds. Governor Pawlenty of Minnesota punched a hole in the life raft that the Council...
Education
March 3, 2010

Big dates with the feds

Here they are! – March 4th United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will be announcing the roster of Race to the Top awardees. From a friend: Duncan will announce the RTTT Phase I finalists this Thursday. States will know around 11:30...
Education
February 26, 2010

Why soft skills are pernicious

Way back in February 2009, we criticized a report issued by the 21st century skills task force report produced by an ad hoc committee established by the chair of the board of education. The report pushed for a move away from the...
Education
February 23, 2010

On Finn and Linn

Checker Finn has a great blog at the Flypaper, which notes the “heavier and heavier burdens” of the common standards project of the National Governors Association (NGA) and Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). I disagree with Checker when he notes...
Education
February 23, 2010

Arne Duncan goes DC

There was/is the big push to centralize health care. Now centralize academic standards? Yesterday, speaking to the National Governors Association President Obama made it clear that he now is ready to open up a second front in centralizing authority within the federal...
Education
February 19, 2010

Charters and disadvantaged students

We’ve had some long discussions with legislators and the media over the past few years about “disadvantaged students” and how they fare at charters. As we often note, the number of poor and minority students in charters are higher on statewide comparisons;...
Education
October 28, 2009

Good news on charter performance

From Marc Kenen of the Mass Charter School Association comes some good news. The new MCAS growth model analysis shows that charter public schools are producing very strong academic gains for their students statewide (see the data at the Boston Globe online):...