In a lot of states teachers are saying they are not getting raises and legislators are saying but we’re giving you increases in comp. In some places spending isn’t growing at all. So often everyone is telling the truth but missing the bigger picture. A new report from Bellwether and TeacherPensions.org explains why:

We found that nationally benefit spending is up 22 percent compared with only a 1.6 percent increase in K-12 spending overall from 2005 to 2014. As a result, the share of national education funding spent on benefits jumped from 16 percent in 2005 to over 19 percent in 2014. In the aggregate, more than $11 billion fewer dollars made it to the classroom.

And here are Chad Aldeman and Max Marchitello with some solution ideas.

Pride of Darden and Bellwether summer fellow Lea Nieuwoudt on what to expect when you’re expecting a turnaround.

Here’s Achievement Network (Bellwether client) on how to do assessment right – instruction first. Important paper because it shows the distance between best practice and current practice in a lot of places and how that fuels problems in schools and in our politics.

This podcast is great, this season looks good. 

Can school districts run autonomous schools that capture some of the benefits of chartering?  I like to think so – and there are some examples – but nothing at scale and here’s a new report from PPI offering some skepticism on the whole idea. Important conversation to have because while “do both” is the kind of thing people say to sound reasonable, an effective strategy requires making some choices.

Related, here’s a CRPE deep dive on 18 cities and some lessons learned. 

Profile of Peoples Prep in Newark.

Some fact checking by Peter Cunningham. And Amy Wilkins:

Educational justice, equity and integration are goals toward which my family, like Ms. Kaplan’s, has pressed for generations. But in my almost 30 years of working on school reform, I’ve been to far too many “integrated” schools where injustice thrives — by design. Many are really two schools in one: a school in which the white students are enrolled in Advanced Placement classes and one in which students of color languish in low-level and remedial courses.

Gary Hart reflects on California’s charter law.

Updated Fordham analysis on the state of state standards. And here’s another state with an education themed political race: Wisconsin. 

Glock DeVos. Also, there is this.

Science of Learning: The legend of Yellow Yellow.