July 12, 2016

Intramural Democratic Education Fight, In Higher Ed It’s Not Just The For-Profits, Teacher Pensions, Litigation On Title IX And Mississippi Charters, Fryer & Bennet In The News, Common Core, Plus Cocaine Bear.

By Bellwether

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The focus on for-profit colleges and their problems has obscured the larger problem of higher ed quality.

The bad news: The Democratic platform went sideways on aggressive school improvement for underserved kids. The good news: Platforms don’t matter that much. DFER goes to the videotape here. DFER statement here.

Teacher pension quote of the day:

Edwin T. Burton III, a University of Virginia economics professor who served more than 20 years on the VRS board, suggested that teachers and other public employees don’t get much benefit from the traditional pension system unless they stay for long careers.

“The vast majority of public school teachers in this state get very little benefit out of this system,” Burton said.

More litigation on the Obama Administration Title IX transgender guidance. Even within states suing some disagreement among officials.

Litigation in Mississippi from the Southern Poverty Law Center agains the state’s charter school law. SPLC has done a lot of important work so it’s pretty dismaying to see them effectively blocking poor families from having choices over their schooling.

Nothing to see here, move along…move along….

Noted economist and education researcher Roland Fryer making a dent on the debate over race and policing, too. (Read the whole thing not just the headline, he doesn’t lend himself to soundbites).

Screws tightening on Ohio’s most notorious virtual school.  And don’t call them government schools! Or do. Whatever. Let’s just work to make them better?

Some states are trying to embed the PARCC test as a post-secondary prep tool others going with different options – IL the latter.  Not surprisingly the tests are emerging as the cover for efforts to keep the standards.

On bad academic writing, too many juicy lines to pull quote.

There is plenty to be concerned about in terms of policing of speech and thought on campus right now but outrage about this seems like a caricature and grasping at straws.  Question seems sort of key for the roles, no?

Catching up on some reading – this is a terrific profile of Michael Bennet, United States Senator from Colorado and education aficionado.

For Bennet, the education bill was something of a bittersweet victory. The eight years it took to pass it, he said in yet another speech to an empty chamber in December, revealed a disturbing lack of urgency on the part of too many of his colleagues who were “content to treat America’s children as if they are someone else’s rather than their own.” The same outcome, he told me later, could have been had years earlier if party leaders had simply given their members the green light to compromise.

Cocaine Bear. Big time father – daughter adventures.

*Post revised to add DFER statement.

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