8/30/2006

Revised State Standards Not That Good -- Let's Go National!

According to my friends (and occasional clients) over at the Fordham Foundation, state standards still suck ("C-" is the average grade) and now it's really time for national standards (The State of State Standards 2006).

The inevitable move to national standards could go four ways, according to the creative folks at Fordham -- "the whole enchilada" (aka everyone abandons local control), "if you build it, they will come" (aka what Clinton proposed and Vic Klatt killed in 1997), "let's all hold hands" (some sort of unholy cooperation among states that hate each other), and the most likely of the unlikely options, "sunshine and shame."

I'm not against national standards. I just don't see how we get from here to there in the current political environment. In large part, it boils down to whether Congress decides to strengthen or dilute NCLB next year. If Congress is in a diluting mood -- seems likely in the last years of Bush II 2 -- this probably won't happen.

Lower SAT Scores -- Different Papers Cover Differently

Practically everyone covers the SAT story today, with interesting variations in how they introduce the decline in scores for this year's test takers. Thanks to Margaret P for suggesting this comparison.

Some writers focused on the scores, others on explaining why they were lower this year, and a third type focused on the impact of the lower scores on college-going kids who take the tests:

For example, the Associated Press focuses on the test itself and goes with the College Board explanation that more kids were taking the longer test just one time (SAT Scores Take Biggest PLunge in 31 Years). Meanwhile, the NYT's Karen Arenson goes with the gut issue -- how the scores are received by college admissions officials -- in her story (SAT Reading and Math Scores Show a Significant Decline).

Over at the Post, Jay Mathews gets crazy and plays the boy/girl card in his opening, pointing out that females did much better on the new writing section than boys (SAT REcords Biggest Score Dip in 31 Years). Last but not least, USAT focuses on the reduced numbers of low-income test takers (Scores for expanded SAT show largest dip since 1975).

8/29/2006

More Newspapers Heart Education Blogs

Over at Get On The Bus, blogging Scott Elliott appropriately makes fun of me for having predicted 10 new newspaper-run education blogs like his by the end of the year -- and then points out that there are a few new newspaper education blogs in Houston and White Plains.

Back To School Optimism? Maybe.

Even in this officially optimistic "back to school" time of year, educators, parents, policymakers, and even bloggers have to deal with the threat of pessimism (or its cousins cynicism and doubt). Today's NYT has an opinion piece about pessimism that perhaps goes too far in blaming President Bush for its ascent -- we can't blame him for everything -- and yet seems worth noting (The Rise of Pessimism).

Structural Reasons for NCLB Failures

Agree or not, it's always interesting to to hear views from different sources making somewhat different points than the same old folks saying the same old things. And so:

"Education reform has an exceptionally fraught history in the United States, despite the universally acknowledged inadequacy of the primary and secondary education systems," claims today's Forbes Magazine post from Oxford Analytica (Bush's Education Reforms Falter). "This woeful record, which now includes President George Bush's No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), is due to the idiosyncrasies of the U.S. political system and serious structural disincentives. Unless these challenges can be overcome in relatively short order, NCLB may fail."

8/28/2006

Over-Blogged?

Looking at the last couple of weeks of posts on my Bloglines made me wonder: what's the ideal number of blog posts per day from a reader's perspective -- assuming they're good -- and does a blog that posts a lot necessarily have any more to say or ... just think it does?

'Cuz there are certainly some busy folks out there, including espresso (59 posts in the past two weeks), ROTLC and the AFTies (45), Eduwonk (40), and School Me! (39).

Three a day for two weeks (M-F) would get you to 30 posts over the past two weeks. That seems about right to me, at least for an individual blogger. Four a day would get you to 40 posts, and to get over 40, you're doing 5 or more posts a day, on average, which -- for me, at least -- wouldn't leave a lot of time to think or get any other work done. Not that I'm known for getting much done anyway.