Scroll down for edujobs, including Development Director at Bellwether.
In The 74 I take a look at ESSA 2018 now that we’re moving from plans to action as the law is implemented. In addition to ESSA you get cameos by Iron Mike, Ike, and various Bellwarians of all stripes.
In the same package Nat Malkus looks at an NCLB legacy that lives on in ESSA – a move away from local control. NCLB is a law that launched a thousand dissertations. But my take has always been that it was better understood as a pull of autonomy away from local school districts and to states than as a state power grab. The law told states to do things but left a lot of the how up to them – that turned out to be one of the law’s flaws. Sandy Kress dissents here.
Here’s a look at public school choice in Philly that ties to NCLB, too.
And here is a straightforward take on Janus. And here’s a Jonas deep dive on Massachusetts’ reform anniversary.
Robin Lake on charter politics and some upcoming work on that.
It should go without saying (alas, in nuance-averse 2018, few assumptions can safely go unsaid) that we ought not be blithe about societal problems or the degree to which the impulse to insulate very young children from very real problems is a form of “privilege.” But neither should we overstate the dangers of the present moment. Mostly I wonder if it’s not worth thinking long and hard about the effects on children of a rapidly growing educational movement that proceeds from the pessimistic assumption that the world is so cracked and broken, that even the very youngest children need tools to make their way in it. At the very least, we might consider the age at which it’s appropriate to introduce these curricula and tools.
Why are our most important teachers paid the least? Short answer, ask Sara Mead. Longer discussion in a Times magazine story people are chattering about.
