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Andy Rotherham pens a smart column in this week's TIME Magazine ('States' Rights and States' Wrongs On School Reform'). In it, he deals with the oft-ignored issue of the capacity of state departments of education to implement education reforms or engage in strategic policymaking. Today's state departments of education are good at compliance, but with few exceptions, they are not good at strategy or leading systemic change. That's why competition is so fierce for talented individuals who are willing to work in state education agencies.... Rotherham loses me a bit with his proposed solution, glossing over the fiscal difficulties that would prevent a strengthening of state departments of education. So what to do? States need better bureaucrats. In some places, this means hiring new people. In others, it means making sure the right people aren't focusing on the wrong activities. Hey, I'm all for trying to work smarter. But the problem is that th...

Gail Collins' ( New York Times ) political obituary of -- now lame duck -- U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut is well worth reading. She nails it with this line: "If you’re continually admiring yourself as you walk away from your group, eventually people are going to feel an irresistible desire to trip you." Yep. I've always thought of 'sanctimonious' as the word I would choose if the name 'Joe Lieberman' came up in a word association game. Not one of my favorites, that's for sure. Given his role in watering down health care reform and opposing a public option, I wouldn't be surprised if a cushy job in the insurance industry is in Lieberman's future. To his credit, he did actually vote for the final health care bill, however. You can view Lieberman's version of his record on education policy here .

This isn't an education story, per se. But it's too important to ignore. The education angle to the recent tragedy in Tucson, Arizona is the fact that the apparent shooter recently attended a local community college. While I think it is unfair to hold Pima Community College responsible for Jared Loughner, this New York Times article and Sunday's Washington Post editorial does raise some smart questions about what could have been done differently, most notably having sought an involuntary mental evaluation of the suspect. Hindsight, of course, is 20/20. Currently, too much of the public conversation about Tucson is about culpability and about the role of political discourse in fueling the violence. Those are possibly irrelevant or overly simplistic conversations. It is unclear if political discourse had much bearing on Loughner's decision to do what he did. Sunday's New York Times story suggests that his twisted belief that "women should not be allowed to h...

THIS GUEST POST COMES FROM ROBERT KELCHEN, DOCTORAL CANDIDATE IN EDUCATIONAL POLICY STUDIES AT UW-MADISON. In a new report, Filling in the Blanks: How Information Can Affect Choice in Higher Education , Andrew Kelly and Mark Schneider of the American Enterprise Institute examine the role that information can play in the college choice process. One thousand parents in five states were asked which of two similar colleges they would recommend to their high school-age child. Half of the parents were given information about the colleges’ six-year graduation rates, while half were not. The researchers found that parents who were provided information about graduation rates were fifteen percentage points more likely to recommend the college with the higher graduation rate to their child, with larger differentials for parents who reported having less information about colleges and who had lower levels of education. The intervention shows the importance of providing salient information to the pa...

Proposed education reforms that do not imagine that current and beginning teachers can become more effective while on the job should be considered null and void. This postulation, if accepted, would direct Michelle Rhee's new StudentsFirst agenda to the nearest paper shredder. To be blunt, it is just plain naive and short-sighted to think that we can maximize teacher effectiveness purely by firing more teachers and marginally changing the cadre of incoming teacher candidates. Is supporting and strengthening the teaching practice of our veteran educators not worthy of our focus and investment? StudentsFirst's "Elevate Teaching" policy objectives are limited to evaluating teachers and principals, reforming teacher certification laws, reforming teacher compensation, "exiting" teachers, and eliminating teacher tenure. Specifically, the objectives are: State law must require evaluation that is based substantially on student achievement. Evaluation tools sho...

You may have noticed the recent near radio silence from Sara on our blog. No, she isn't on a secret mission and hasn't left academia to join the NSA. She, however, has been busy as a bee this past year, starting with giving birth to our daughter , being named a W.T. Grant Scholar , and engaging in important academic research . My pride in her commitment to, excellence in and passion for issues of educational and social inequality is coupled with a recognition of her unwillingness to see academic research relegated to dusty and sometimes impenetrable academic journals. Sara has been aggressive and public with her research and committed to engaging in and communicating her work in a policy relevant manner. That fits a critical need in public policy conversations. That's why I was quite pleased to see Sara's name mentioned among the ranks of the most prominent academics in the nation in the "EduScholar" rankings issued by the American Enterprise Institute's...

We hope all our readers enjoyed relaxing holidays and have returned refreshed for the new year. While our family and professional lives continue to make it difficult to blog with great frequency, we hope you'll continue to read our infrequent commentary and join in the discussion during 2011. A few thoughts to start the new year... (1) Outcomes First? If outcomes are what really matter in education, it is interesting that so many advocates, commentators and policy organizations seem to count adoption of favored policy reforms as ends in themselves. We are all guilty of this to some degree. It is only when there is a research base to suggest that specific reforms and programs work that there is a strong argument to be made. Examples might include targeted class size reduction in grades k-3, high-quality early childhood education, and comprehensive, multi-year induction support for new teachers. But, at a macro level, certain arguments fall apart when there is no evidence to back...