Links for 2/14/11

Elena Silva

In 2008, 75 DCPS teachers, all on probationary status, were fired…

these teachers were clearly deemed to be “ineffective or worse” by their supervisors, with principal narratives describing problems such as “extremely poor classroom management skills,” “rude and aggressive demeanor toward paraprofessionals,” an “excessive failure rate at every marking period,” “excessive absences and latenesses, including 24 tardies, and 20 days of absences,” and “AWOL since May 5th.”…

the decision… sends the teachers back to the classroom…

Score one for no one. A bunch of beginning teachers who, with the nicest spin, weren’t doing well, are coming back into DC classrooms! DC now owes a bunch more money. DCPS gets to chase after teachers it doesn’t really want. And the union falls further from grace by living up to its image as the protector of bad teachers…

Andrew J. Rotherham

Teach For America (TFA)… has generated a great deal of research about how to improve the teacher training and selection strategies that are commonly used today. Yet the reaction from the education establishment remains one of intense hostility…

Pretty much every article about TFA states the boilerplate assertion that the research about its effectiveness is "mixed" or "inconclusive." Actually, that's only true if you think the best way to consume research is to literally pile all the different studies up and see which pile is higher. Again and again, the most rigorous studies show that TFA's selection process and boot-camp training produce teachers who are as good, and sometimes better, than non-TFA teachers, including those who have been trained in traditional education schools and those who have been teaching for decades…

Neil Raisman

the major difference between a good non-profit and for-profit school is an accounting system -- fund balance versus cash accrual. But there are also differences in four significant areas: the people who run the schools and who carry out the operations; the way people are compensated; the intensity of the efforts; and how the operations are accomplished…

In my personal history as a chancellor and consultant to career colleges, I have observed some leaders of companies, schools, and departments doing things to make numbers that were to be polite, very questionable. And yet, they were rewarded for doing so…

Richard Kahlenberg

British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg argued that universities in England were instruments of “social segregation,”…

no American president or vice president or education secretary has ever made a similar high-profile case for more economic diversity in America’s selective colleges…

Why have we allowed the British, who are known for their aristocratic history, to lead Americans in making universities more democratic?