Here’s a new analysis by Kelly Robson and Julie Squire on charter school facilities in Idaho.

Currently, about 6,000 Idaho students are on waitlists for charter schools. And the state is expected to add nearly 22,000 new prek-12 students by fall 2022. The charter sector can help ensure these students have access to a high-quality school, but only if it is able to grow and expand. Unfortunately, future growth in the charter sector is stymied by its limited access to facilities financing…

…we use survey data we collected from Idaho’s charter school leaders to quantify the stark discrepancy in access to state and local facilities funding sources between district and charter schools: On average, districts have access to approximately $1,445 per pupil of state and local funding. Charter schools get less than one-quarter this amount on average: $347.

Heroes walk amongst us. Watch a high school student undress their school board for the kind of redistricting decisions that happen all the time even in communities that consider themselves delightfully progressive:

Although you claim to “value all students, staff and families in our diverse, inclusive school community,” when given the opportunity to help free and reduced lunch students, you consciously chose to do the exact opposite. Your stated mission is to prepare students to “be responsible and productive global citizens.” Surely part of becoming a “global citizen” includes knowing how to interact with people that don’t look like you.  Yet, this move in four years according to your own data will remove 27 percent of black students at Washington-Lee and send them to Wakefield, despite the fact that Wakefield’s a black population is already larger (20.7 percent to Washington-Lee’s 9.0). After this move, according to your data, Wakefield will have twice as many black students as Washington-Lee and Yorktown combined. Additionally, if your projections for this move are correct, Yorktown will pass James Madison and Langley to host the highest concentration of whites in one high school inside the beltway. Arlington is only 26 square miles but through negligence you’ve managed to become more racially segregated than all 406 square miles of Fairfax.

Give that kid a column!

Chad Aldeman takes a look at a missed opportunity to improve teacher pensions in Michigan:

How would closing a pension plan be good for teachers?

First, Michigan teachers would have been eligible for retirement benefits much earlier in their careers. Right now, Michigan teachers have to stay 10 years before they qualify for even a minimal pension. According to the state’s own financial models, 57 percent of new teachers won’t make it that far. Under the new plan, teachers would have been eligible for half of their employer’s contribution after just two years, and 100 percent after four years. That would have meant more Michigan teachers had access to retirement benefits earlier in their careers.

Second, the new plan would have been more generous for teachers. According to the official fiscal analysis conducted on the bill, Michigan teachers currently receive retirement benefits worth just 4 percent of their salary. Under the proposed legislation, teachers would have received retirement benefits worth 7 percent of their salary. That would cost the state a bit more money, true, but Michigan teachers would have gotten more in the way of retirement benefits.

Third, the state would have stopped accruing the large unfunded liabilities that are eating into school budgets. In response to those debts, the state has already raised contribution rates and cut benefits for new teachers. Today, Michigan employers are contributing not just the four percent for benefits; they’re actually contributing more than 22 percent of each teacher’s salary toward the pension plan. That is now set to continue for the foreseeable future.

RiShawn Biddle on Walter Scott and school reform.

One of the most-interesting aspects of the criminal justice reform movement is that it has been as championed by many conservatives and libertarians (including Radley Balko of the Washington Post, Jonathan Blanks of the Cato Institute, Congressman Justin Amash, and Atlantic Monthly‘s Conor Friedensdorf) as it has been by progressives and Black Lives Matter activists. Cato, in particular, is holding a conference this week tackling such issues as mass incarceration and militarization of police departments (including those harming children in our schools).

I’m starting to think Chris Christie is Ursula Le Guin’s wretched Omelas child in the basement for President-elect Donald Trump. He must suffer so Trump can thrive. Passed over for VP, pushed off of the transition, no AG, no DHS, and now apparently he won’t lead the RNC. But don’t forget Christie’s awful school finance proposal a few months ago. It basically pitted middle class and affluent communities against poor ones by telling the former they were getting ripped off and that everyone should just get the same funding allocations. The whole plan seemed to me an effort to step into the slipstream of Trumpist politics. Even without Christie that kind of inverse class warfare on education could be one way Trumpism moves depending on 2018 and 2020 politics.

The PISA data this week was covered top-line and is certainly not all great news but there is also some really interesting stuff buried in it. And I would like to assume this means we can stop fetishizing Finland. But that’s probably wrong given the cargo cult approach to things in the education sector. Bob Rothman says Estonia is now open for business. Don’t miss Amanda Ripley on this.

ESSA testing rules. Dan Quisenberry on the DeVos record in Michigan. Is the President-elect softening on immigration policy for Dreamers? Is the Yale investment model busted?

Wait, I read on Twitter that this was a big scandal…wump wump wump….NCTQ is out with a new analysis and rating of elementary education programs.

The President-elect called out a local union leader – by name – on Twitter last night. That is not behavior becoming a United States president (and in the current climate it’s dangerous). It also should terrify the teachers union. They are looking at bigger problems than a school choice policy they don’t like. For instance today Randi Weingarten called the Secretary of Labor-designee “slime.” That about sums up where they are.

Slightly off-edu: My wife and I host a concert series for folk/roots style music at a place in Arlington, VA. We partner with a non-profit Spread Music Now on some of it – they help expose low-income kids to music. Next show is 4/29/17, Sam Gleaves and Tyler Hughes are coming. Here’s NPR on Sam. Here’s No Depression with an article and song.  Here’s both of them. Sam’s message is a good one for the times. Save date if you’re interested. All are welcome, contact me for details.