EdLoC is live. Website and early efforts here. Impressive team, board, and advisors here. Stay tuned.

Here’s a look at how screwed up (and political) teacher hiring is.

Education workforce data from Illinois. Even if you don’t have a stake in Illinois the method and the trends are interesting. Plus Bellwether can do this for your state! Contact us to learn more. Chad Aldeman on once slice of it here.

Survey of young people and their views on the presidential candidates – some really interesting data (pdf). If you’re worried about their authoritarian tendencies Table 7 won’t help!

Former Obama administration official and Chicagoan Peter Cunningham is not a fan of the revised Democratic platform on education:

The amendments adopted by the Democratic Platform Committee are a step backwards at a time when America can’t afford to stand still, let alone retreat. Improving public education for low-income Black and Hispanic children shouldn’t be a matter of debate or a political football. It’s an economic and a moral imperative…

…Education should be a voting issue but Democrats should at least make sure that we are asking people to vote the right way. Accountability and public school choice are core values of the last two Democratic administrations. The last thing we should do is abandon them. The littlest guys are counting on us.

Morgan Polikoff has a sign-on letter about proficiency rates as the primary measure of school accountability.  We don’t have accountability right, to be sure, but what’s hard here is (a) knowing what we know about the political culture of the education sector the only thing worse than allowing some flexibility to innovate here is probably not allowing it and (b) this does have the ring of taking things that don’t work for kids in practice but coming together to make them work in theory and (c) there are ways to do proficiency that address some of the legitimate concerns, states tend not to do them though, see (a). Not an easy issue.

Vox has an interesting package on life for Olympic involved athletes after the games are over. Here’s a related story with an education angle on it – how Steve Mesler ended up founding Classroom Champions after his bobsled career ended.*

This is not a flattering account for Exeter.

PD versus lesson plans.

Shopping lizard. Today in volcano news.

*I’m on the board.