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Education
October 28, 2009

How is this for pushing hard to obtain Race to the Top Funds?

In a recent post, I pointed to the new Commissioner of Education in RI, Deborah Gist, and her moves to remove seniority from decisions about teacher hiring and deployment. (Springfield, MA, is the only other place in the Northeast to be trying...
Education
October 28, 2009

Will the Gloucester mess impact the charter cap lift?

Whether House Education Committee Chair Marty Walz was deflecting yesterday in noting that the decisions on the charter school caps may be further in the future, we can’t know. God knows she has a lot of people offering advice so a little...
Education
August 12, 2009

Charter Watch, August 11

Thus begins our series of posts on how people are moving the goal posts on charters. We noticed this a while ago, but with Jamie Vaznis’ piece in the Globe today, I’ll start keeping tabs more publicly. Jamie V asks a fair...
Education
May 29, 2009

Will MA forfeit education stimulus dollars?

EdNews.org passes on this AP report on US Ed Secretary Arne Duncan’s threat to stonewallers on charter schools. As part of the federal stimulus package, there is a $5 billion fund to promote innovations, and President Obama is a clear proponent of...
Education
March 24, 2009

Is KIPP really scalable?

Yesterday on Slate, in her review of Jay Mathews’ new book on KIPP, the Knowledge is Power Program, which now runs 66 schools in 19 states mostly geared to disadvantaged and minority students, Sara Mosle begins with an interesting remark: Let me...
Education
March 28, 2008

Patrick comes out for school choice!

Your Excellency, We at Pioneer were feeling as double-crossed as perhaps Bobby Haynes.  We were feeling it on school choice, knowing that you benefited from the school choice opportunity provided by the “A Better Chance” foundation to attend Milton Academy.  Bobby felt...
Education
March 26, 2008

School choice programs increase 84 percent in 5 years

No, not here, silly. In the rest of the United States! Do I have to explain everything to you?! Passing on bits of the press release from the Alliance for School Choice: Student enrollment in private school choice programs, which include school...
Education
March 25, 2008

WaPo on Michelle Rhee and quality teachers

The keynote for this year’s Better Government Competition, which is focused solely on improving our educational system, is Michelle Rhee. In addition to a recent shakeup in the bureaucracy, she has been closing some schools. All very focused on improvement. Probably more...
Education
March 12, 2008

Michelle Rhee takes out the knife

From the Washingtonian.com piece on Michelle Rhee, the chancellor of DC schools, there is a quote that stood out from the rest of the piece as the primary dilemma that Rhee and Mayor Fenty are trying to stare down: “She’s got all...
Education
March 11, 2008

NYC charter to pay teachers more than lawyers

But the unions don’t like this idea. A proposed New York City charter school is to pay teachers $125,000. There is even thought of adding incentive pay for high performance. The idea is that the higher salaries will be made possible by...