Online Education in America

Welcome Jenna Bush Hager to the ed beat. She’s the newest education contributor to the Today Show.
The Core Knowledge Blog rounds up opinion about whether kids should read books of their own choice.
The Washington Post has redesigned its education page, launching a new blog just for parents.
This week, the National Journal’s panel of experts is [...]

The fight over mayoral control isn’t over, according to a stalwart group of activists who convened a meeting Saturday to plan how to increase local control of city schools.
Comptroller candidate John Liu and mayoral candidate Tony Avella joined an energized and sometimes raucous crowd of around 70 public school parents, teachers and advocates at the [...]

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz named his appointee to the resurrected citywide school board today, choosing a college administrator with a child in the city’s public school system.
Gbubemi Okotieuro, the associate dean for governmental and external relations at Medgar Evers College and the father of a high school senior, said in an interview today that [...]

As teachers start gearing up for the first day of classes next week, many are logging in to ARIS, the city’s online school data warehouse. But some are finding that despite all that ARIS offers, it still isn’t in sync with what teachers really need.
Miss Brave, a second-grade teacher, writes on her blog:
Now, I am [...]

News from New York City:

City principals are hiring ad agencies to boost their schools’ profiles. (Post)
Even with their options limited, some principals are choosing not to fill positions. (GothamSchools, Times)
A teacher who just left the city says the city schools would benefit from tracking by ability. (Daily News)
Fewer city schools are considering failing under NCLB, thanks [...]

News from New York City:

City principals are hiring ad agencies to boost their schools’ profiles. (Post)
Even with their options limited, some principals are choosing not to fill positions. (GothamSchools, Times)
A teacher who just left the city says the city schools would benefit from tracking by ability. (Daily News)
Fewer city schools are considering failing under NCLB, thanks [...]

D.C.’s mayor, Adrian Fenty, kept his promise and moved his kids from private to public school for this fall.
Aaron Pallas on why the Leadership Academy study was “bungled by design.”
Students found out before the teachers at Pissed Off Teacher’s school who was teaching what.
Jay Mathews speculates on whether AP exams will take over the SAT’s role [...]

Teach for America isn’t alone in planning to keep its new members busy even if they don’t land positions before the start of school. The city’s Teaching Fellows program is also offering short-term activities for new teachers shut out by the hiring freeze.
Teaching Fellows who haven’t been hired by a school by Sept. 18 can [...]

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is offering to open up. Photo via Wikimedia commons.

Responding to the national push for more transparent government, the Bloomberg administration is opening up some of its datasets for easier public consumption. The only question is what data the city will throw up on the new Web site.
The city is taking suggestions starting [...]

Teach for America is calling on its sizable alumni base to help entertain new teachers while they wait for the hiring freeze to be lifted.
Despite halving the size of this year’s cohort and directing many teachers to charter schools, TFA still hasn’t found jobs for 118 of its 300-odd new teachers, according to an e-mail sent to graduates of [...]

Don’t Think Too Highly of Yourself, warns Mark Bauerlein on the Education Next blog.  Contrary to the prevailing wisdom, he writes, “higher confidence does not go with better math scores.”  The Brown Center’s How Well Are American Students Learning? report used TIMSS data to compare eighth-grade students in different countries.
“Countries with more confident students who [...]

The outlook for city teachers without positions hasn’t brightened much in the last month, even with the external hiring freeze meant to help them land jobs.
Just about 300 of the teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve found new jobs in the last month. That leaves about 2,000 ATRs on the Department of Education’s payroll with just weeks before [...]

Much of what everyone knows about child-raising isn’t so, write Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman in Nurture Shock: New Thinking About Children. Child development research develops over time, they write, leaving old ideas behind.
Kay Hymowitz summarizes in a Wall Street Journal book review:
And what do they show? That high self-esteem doesn’t improve grades, reduce [...]

Oooooh! Oooooh!  Sweathog Arnold Horshack is back in school. Welcome Back, Lotter actor Ron Palillo is teaching acting at a Florida charter high school, reports the Sun-Sentinel.

Students at G-STAR School of the Arts behave a lot better than the Sweathogs, the actor says.
“These kids want to be here,” Palillo said during a campus [...]

More than 250 Los Angeles schools – from the very worst to 50 new multi-million-dollar campuses — could be turned over to charter networks and outside operators under a plan approved 6-1 by the school board. Supt. Ramon C. Cortines, who supported the plan, will be able to recommend the best option to run [...]