Nat Malkus on DC. RiShawn Biddle on DC. Behind the scenes a lot of people are asking some hard questions about D.C schools and how widespread the issues like those at Ballou are. It’s not just wonks, local educators and various people with ties to the system are starting to as well. Washington Post is digging in.
Robin Lake on charter growth.
“The lowest hanging fruit for policy change in the United States today is K-12,” said Stacy Hock, a major Koch donor who has co-founded a group called Texans for Educational Opportunity. “I think this is the area that is most glaringly obvious.”
That’s arguably true in terms of the opportunity to do better. But the politics….it’s not an easy place to drive change in case you haven’t noticed…
In Massachusetts Jeff Riley gets the nod as the next commissioner.
We should be concerned about the pressure kids are under and the increasing amounts of anxiety they are experiencing – and the multiple causes of that. But as Doug Lemov has noted, the push toward getting rid of grades, test scores, and standards at elite schools is a trend worth resisting unless you’re high on the idea of aristocracy. For all their problems objective measures can help increase social mobility as Jennifer Braceras argues here. Soft measures are a social insurance for people already winning the race who want to insulate themselves.
