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Maryland’s Montgomery County Board of Education has approved its first charter school. It was a long road for Crossway Community, a local nonprofit organization, to open its Montessori-based elementary school, but in recent months it gained the support of Superintendent Joshua Starr and former superintendent Jerry D. Weast. It’s being hailed as a “historic moment […] Read more »

By now, you’ve likely heard that the anti-reform establishment will be marching the streets of D.C. this weekend in an effort to “Save Our Schools.” The participating groups want to restore parent and student influence in education. There’s only one problem with that – they don’t. The National Education Association and the American Federation of […] Read more »

The Scranton Times felt the wrath (ok, it was a measured response) of Sen. Jeffrey Piccola (R-PA) over a piece they published last week on the school choice legislation the senator and others pushed for this past session. Sen. Piccola’s letter wanted to make clear that the voucher portion of the legislation always focused “on […] Read more »

Over the weekend, the New York Times published an article about the growing fight over charter schools in suburban districts. The story focuses on Milburn, New Jersey where the median family household income is $159,000 (yeah, that’s not a typo). Charter opponents provide the typical anti-charter school rhetoric – drains money, the local schools are […] Read more »

Indianapolis Public Schools launched a campaign this month going door to door to try and bring back nearly 5,000 dropouts ranging from ages 7 to 23. It’s a positive effort that’s for sure – especially in a district that has a dropout rate of 24.6 percent. But don’t get too high on that horse just […] Read more »

Ayn Marie Samuelson and Beatrice Davis Fowler come out swinging with their book Exposing the Public Education System, bringing to bear a glut of anecdotal and statistical evidence upon the issue of why so much money is spent on the United State’s public education with such mediocre to poor results. The root problem, they urge, […] Read more »

Have you ever been late to your own party and then botched it on the food, drinks and decorations? This weekend the National Education Association voted to allow student performance to be included in teacher evaluations. Yay, it’s about time! I never thought that would happen. It’s good to finally seeing the NEA take some… […] Read more »

Hmm. Why do I get the sneaking suspicion that I have heard this before? Oh, I know. We wrote about it back on June 14 (Creative Non-Compliance). The issue at hand is Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s disregard for federal law and his willingness to circumvent NCLB to grant conditional waivers to states and schools […] Read more »

History is an important aspect of life to understand. Knowing what transpired and why, who was involved and why they did what they did, drives us to emulate that which is good, and, hopefully, learn from mistakes. That’s why I ask my colleagues to appreciate, as well as tolerate, my concern over a public tribute […] Read more »

Illinois’ education blob is giving themselves a pat on the back. Their “collaboration” helped pass a bill, almost unanimously, that institutes some form of teacher evaluations based on “multiple measures” yet to be defined, and changes tenure rules, slightly. There are longer school days, strike rules requiring 75 percent of teachers to agree, but not […] Read more »