A daily dose of education news around the nation – just in time for a little mid-day break!
Big business: of education. Washington Post Co. Chairman Donald Graham recently lobbied for his company’s subsidiary Kaplan Inc., as for-profit colleges face scrutiny from the federal government about deceptive loan practices in recruiting prospective students. (The Wall Street Journal)
Charter schools: “New Orleans has become a laboratory for education reform since [H]urricane Katrina. Charter schools, which are free to experiment, make up the majority of the city’s schools.” (Christian Science Monitor)
Early education: What can the rest of the country learn from a new report, “Lessons in Early Learning: Building an Integrated Pre-K-12 System in Montgomery County Public Schools”? The report, released today, provides an overview of how Montgomery County Public Schools “used local and federal dollars to craft, implement and improve a system-wide education reform” based on high-quality pre-kindergarten. (Pre-K Now)
Education reform: “It’s clear that teachers are frustrated,” said Christiane Amanpour in a report on the “education crisis.” She spoke with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee. (ABC News)
Governance: In a race for Superintendent of Schools in the state of Idaho, the incumbent is a businessman, the challenger is an educator. Who’s the best man for the job? (The [Spokane] Spokesman-Review)
International education: Ivy-educated Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili told teachers state funding will be directed towards mathematics, physics, engineering, IT technologies and architecture. Chinese- and English-language learning are also encouraged. (Civil.Ge)
Evaluating teachers: A new brief from the Economic Policy Institute describes some of the problems with using student test scores to measure teacher effectiveness. (The Washington Post‘s “Answer Sheet”)
And on Sunday, the Los Angeles Times ran the third major story, called “No gold stars for successful L.A. teachers,” in its series on measuring teacher effectiveness with “value-added” modeling. Note: A grant from The Hechinger Report helped fund the work, though the Hechinger Institute did not participate in the analysis.
