education reform

Joanne Jacobs writes up some of Andy Smarick’s great work in her Show me the reform blog. Andy sees a lot of toothless reforms in Race to the Top and Joe Williams over at DFER thinks that NYC just blew chunks. They are right on the money, so to speak and it is a case of history repeating itself.

The political divisions in education continue to erode in this new era. With Race to the Top forcing more states to adopt progressive education reform initiatives, party lines are getting blurry.

ABCTE was once known as an education reform pushed by the right and opposed by the left. No more. In the past year we have had Democratic legislators introduce bills on behalf of ABCTE and now two different Democratic Governors have issued proclamations supporting ABCTE’s efforts at teacher recruitment.

Both Flypaper and Eduwonk pick up the New York Times story on alternative teaching. Been a great week for ABCTE even while I am down with the flu (not the H1N1 variety).

I was so impressed with the Politics of Blocking outlined in Chubb and Moe's book - Liberating Learning that Heartland asked me to do a book review. You can find it here.

Jay Matthews has a quick ABCTE plug in the Washington Post this morning. If you have not been following it, he told the story a few weeks back about a gifted teacher who was frustrated by the bureaucracy involved with becoming a licensed teacher. To be blunt, if Jay had not inquired, this man would still be battling the powers that be.

Jay Greene does it again with a great link to Sandra Stotsky's review of the latest in the 21st Century Skills push. From Jay's Blog:

Sandra Stotsky has an excellent review in the current issue of The Weekly Standard of Tony Wagner’s book, The Global Achievement Gap.

Here’s the money quote:

We continue to stay in the news in Indiana as SUPERintendent Tony Bennett pushes for major reforms in education. This is great to see as you have a teacher speaking out in favor of these reforms and the SUPERman himself pushing hard.

Let’s break it down – shall we?
1. Teachers have the greatest impact on students

Interesting exchange during the New America Alliance conference on education opportunities here in Santa Barbara. There was a panel with Steve Barr from Green Dot, Kim Smith from NewSchools Venture Fund that was moderated by Dr. Angela Valenzuela. It was supposed to be a panel on business response to education issues but Dr. Valenzuela wanted to use the opportunity to rail against testing.

She picked the wrong panel.

Carnival of Education Innovation

Next Tuesday, August 11, we’re launching a blog carnival—the Carnival of Education Innovation.

A pretty great day in the world wide webisphere for ABCTE. First, our humble little blog is named to the Top 100 blogs for teachers by Clear View Education. So our sincere thanks for that.

Second, it is great to see a teacher come out in favor of the proposed teacher certification changes in Indiana. A true common-sense editorial to help keep things in perspective which seems to be rare in education these days.