Texas Ed Spectator

Worth a read by some Texas Legislators and State Board of Education Members as well.

An Open Letter to Margaret Spellings and Congress:

“Human history,” said H. G. Wells, is “a race between education and catastrophe.” If we stay the course with No Child Left Behind, catastrophe is a sure bet. You’ll soon be deciding the fate of this well-meant but appallingly simplistic piece of legislation. Continued failure to answer the legitimate questions of those you expect to carry out your mandates will further erode trust in your leadership.

I saw this and couldn’t help thinking about Spellings’ “99.9% pure” statement regarding NCLB.

US military death count for Baghdad excluded bombs, mortar and rocket attacks - Africa & Middle East - International Herald Tribune:

BAGHDAD, Iraq The U.S. military did not count people killed by bombs, mortars, rockets or other mass attacks — including suicide bombings — when it reported a dramatic drop in the number of murders around Baghdad last month, the U.S. command said Monday.

The decision to include only victims of drive-by shootings and those killed by torture and execution, usually at the hands of death squads, allowed U.S. officials to argue that a security crackdown that began in the capital on Aug. 7 had more than halved the city’s murder rate.

But the types of slayings, including suicide bombings, that the U.S. excluded from the category of “murder” were not made explicit at the time. That led to considerable confusion after Iraqi Health Ministry figures showed that 1,536 people had died violently around Baghdad in August, nearly the same number as in July.

Let’s see, so when the federal government is actually responsible for developing and carrying out policies, flexibility in measurement standards are allowed. If the federal government is only mandating standards as in NCLB, then there is no room for exceptions.

Statement by Secretary Margaret Spellings on Release of NCES Study on Charter Schools:
Secretary Spellings today made the following statement on the NCES report, “A Closer Look at Charter Schools Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling”:

Many charter schools are still relatively new, and we need to examine how they improve student performance over time for a better picture of how they compare to traditional public schools. Charter schools are empowering low-income parents with new educational options and providing an important lifeline for families in areas where traditional public schools have fallen short of their responsibilities.

I have visited high-performing charter schools all around the country, and I have seen how they take the most at-risk students and refuse to give up on them. These schools are pioneering new classroom strategies that will help us raise achievement in all our public schools.

So if they’re high-performing then we already know how they are, er, performing?

KWTX | A&M Receives Grant To Recruit, Train, Retain Teachers:

Texas A&M University will receive a $600,000 grant for a program designed to help high-need school districts recruit, train and retain mid-career professionals and recent college graduates who didn’t major in education as teachers, US Education Secretary Margaret Spellings announced Thursday.

Why don’t we ever see any grants directed to retaining teachers? My guess is that it’s easier to whine about teacher shortages and get a new crop of teachers in every year rather than address and change the causes of teacher attrition. But it’s just a guess.