A couple years ago, I was scratching away at a cello (after a 25-year layoff), and my teacher was working with me on improvisation.  So, I was intrigued by reporter/keyboardist Greg Toppo's USA Today piece earlier this week on a...

Ed Sector, March 6, 2008, Kevin Carey:This is the "if you multiply some number times some other number times some other number times the entirety of the American public education system, the result is a non-trivial number" excuse, i.e. the...

A week or so back, it was field trips.  Today, on the Washington Post's front page, it's the arts.The Post's Katherine Shaver reports that a fourth-grade teacher put together a morning of art instruction as "a protest in public school...

This is probably a breach of blog etiquette, but... Our blog statistics software showed a visitor with an eop.gov tag within the last 24 hours or so.  With some help from the ARIN database, one can make a logical guess...

No, not that Bonds.  One of the school finance issues that I hope one day to understand better is the bond market. Every interaction convinces me that it is a place where taxpayers and schools get taken advantage of, or, more to...

Eduwonkette flags a proposal for merit pay for prison wardens.  This isn't the first time we've seen a parrallel between the corrections field and education. In Illinois a few years back there was a bill to create "charter prisons." Unfortunately, the...

Marc Dean Millot at edbizbuzz writes up last week's annual meeting of the Education Industry Association, which featured the House education committee's ranking member, Howard "Buck" McKeon.McKeon told the education industry folks how the fall election might affect NCLB authorization:...

Wow. The Illinois Education Association is trying to organize a charter school in Pingree Grove, IL .  The management response included a staple of union busting: the mandatory meeting to harangue the staff.  This is usually accompanied by mandatory one on one...

We  haven't been linking enough to the people who are actually doing the work out there.  This post is a slight attempt to make amends mostly by writing briefly about how I relate to their posts: Mr AB remains the...

Susan Ohanian didn't like my blog post stating that an anti-NCLB video was neither funny nor effective.  So, she responds with a multiple choice question.   2. The AFT NCLB blog criticizes a) Margaret Spellings' statement that NCLB "is like Ivory...

From time to time, we've made a little bit of fun of Alexander's foibles (who can forget this, this and this. We miss Michele).  But  I totally dig the ethos of a blogger who actually thinks it's better to be able to...

One of the reasons I was glad to start blogging was because I’d concluded that peer review and the other conventions of social research that make it into real science were not up to the task of contributing effectively to...

AFT President Edward J. McElroy announced he will retire, effective in July. AFT Secretary-Treasurer Nat LaCour also announced he will be stepping down in July.Update: Below After the jump is the full text of the press statement announcing the retirements....

As the father of two boys, I was fascinated -- and intimidated -- when I read this interview.  USA Today's Greg Toppo talks with children's author Jon Scieszka.One bone to pick:  From personal experience -- my 4-year-old son talked about...

A couple of days ago Kevin Carey compared Bill James’ work in baseball statistics to value-added assessment while taking on Steve Koss.  Kevin writes: “Moreover, Koss doesn't know what he's talking about. The NYC value-added measures are not "derived from...