The Texas model is doing to higher education what the Florida model did for K-12, at least according to supporters of the seven-point reform plan. Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, has been passing the plan around to higher education officials and has tentatively signaled his support in interviews. The reforms are a hallmark of Republican […]
Journalist Steven Brill was on “The Diane Rehm Show” this morning discussing New York City schools’ “Rubber Rooms,” where teachers facing disciplinary action sit and wait — collecting pay checks and taking summers off — in what Brill wrote can be an endless process. Brill is also the author of “Class Warfare: Inside the Fight […]
Former Atlanta school chief Beverly Hall has a column in Education Week addressing her school district’s cheating on state tests. Her conclusion? Don’t blame the reforms. “Should I have anticipated cheating, based on dramatic gains in test scores? With hindsight, I wish I had. But there was every reason to believe that our dramatic […]
Amanda Moreno at The Huffington Post attempts to peel apart the arguments used by the education reform advocates against those who oppose high-stakes student testing, performance pay and other measures states are adopting across the country. Moreno’s piece is sure to provoke an argument, but one section seems worthy of discussion. Moreno notes that a […]
An animated discussion of what motivates performance — in an era of merit pay and accountability — from author Dan Pink.
Teachers are saying they have had enough of the politicization of their profession and are retiring in numbers this year, a trend reported across the state in recent weeks. Palm Beach County teacher Margot Collins told the Palm Beach Post why she is leaving after 32 years: “The whole thing is just overwhelming me these […]
That’s the question the Wall Street Journal asks in their weekend interview with the Microsoft founder and education philanthropist. Gates admits a $100 million program to create smaller high schools did not work as well as hoped: “But the overall impact of the intervention, particularly the measure we care most about—whether you go to college—it […]
I first realized the power I have as a journalist while covering education in Oakland. I was part of a team that created a radio documentary on the public school system. Our work compelled listeners to donate toward filling the food cabinet of a teacher struggling to feed her hungry students. And one listener offered […]
States may be wasting time and money attempting to pay teachers based on student performance, undermining a new Florida law requiring merit pay in schools statewide. Performance-based bonuses neither improve student test scores, nor are the most effective way to motivate educators concluded a RAND Corporation study of a New York City merit pay program. […]
While the headline of this morning’s state Board of Education meeting was Miami-Dade and Duval county schools getting another year to turn around struggling schools, the takeaway was a conversation about shortcomings in the way Florida judges troubled schools. The problem is the state expects more once schools are classified as troubled, school officials said, […]
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