The private sector is no more entitled to waste federal tax dollars than the public schools. When it comes to poor student performance, the defense that that parents feel good about their children’s teachers is no more relevant for SES providers under NCLB than it is for schools or districts. Applying the rule of student performance equally to schools and providers is about “accountability” to the taxpayer, “equal protection under the law” between schools and providers, and, in the end, the credibility of the entire school improvement industry. Is the taxpayer getting real value here?   more »

When the "product" is people, the imposition of uniformity and top-down directives is no way to achieve high quality outcomes consistently. Seattle's Santorno and DC's Reinoso disagree. Is anyone familiar with the fate of East Germany's Kombinats?   more »

The state's announcement and our earlier take on the effects of the move for the Big Easy and the City of Brotherly Love   more »

Your editor is sympathetic to the idea that school districts might prefer to bargain over wages, salaries and working conditions with the representative of a teachers' union rather than set the rules by fiat or negotiate with every individual teacher. But the extension of bargaining to all variety of management decisions, for example, assigning teachers to schools based on their own choices according to seniority, rather than where managers believe they can do the most good, takes too much authority away from the citizens who elect school boards preceisely to make such high-level policy decisions. The proposal is bad public policy.   more »