Alexander Russo

The California student killed in Paris saw herself as a driven, independent Mexican American LA Times: Gonzalez, a 23-year-old design student at Cal State Long Beach, had arrived in the city in September. She had never been out of the country and was looking forward to the semester abroad. See also TODAY and Joshua Starr tweet reminding educators to […]

BEST OF THE WEEK Washington Post : Hillary Clinton wades into the internal Democratic debate over public schools http://ow.ly/UCkJu US News: Facebook’s Zuckerberg Doubles Down on Education Investments http://ow.ly/UCnjL NBC: Activist DeRay Mckesson Gives Speech About Being Black and Gay http://ow.ly/UuhxL Sacramento Bee: What’s next for Michelle Rhee, once the national face of education activism? http://ow.ly/UCmKz […]

Last week’s New Yorker had a thought-provoking article about how we produce and consume media including media about kids and schools. Titled Humans of New York and the Cavalier Consumption of Others, the article focuses on the well-known photo from HONY (now a book as well as a website, etc.) of a boy named Vidal, who attends Mott Hall Bridges […]

Sanders-scores-postal-union-endorsement CNN: The American Postal Workers Union announced their endorsement of Sanders Thursday, giving the insurgent Democratic candidate a small boost at a critical moment as his campaign tries to find its way. See also Bloomberg News. Massachusetts Chief Recommends Hybrid State/PARCC Testing Approach State EdWatch: Massachusetts’ education commissioner is recommending that students take a hybrid test in 2017 […]

The Seventy Four’s Campbell Brown couldn’t get Democratic presidential candidates to do an Iowa town hall on education, but front-running Republican candidates have been happy to talk to her. Above see an 11-minute clip from her interview with Marco Rubio (and the accompany article Rubio Decries System Where Only Rich Can Choose Schools). Exclusives and original […]

D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson celebrates 5 years at helm Washington Post: Most urban superintendents leave after three years; many credit stability at the top for D.C.’s improvement. See also Washington Post. Ahead of Departure, Arne Duncan Reflects on Signature Education Programs US News: On Thursday, speaking at the Jeremiah E. Burke High School in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, Duncan […]

Check out this fascinating ProPublica podcast interview with two of the journalists involved in the resegregation of Pinellas County schools, Michael LaForgia and Adam Playford. The Tampa Bay Times series is called Failure Factories. Secretary Arne Duncan apparently called this a “man-made disaster.” One tidbit: Nobody on the team went back before 2012, so they almost missed […]

I don’t know whether it was blogger Diane Ravitch (Hillary Clinton Speaks Up About Charter Schools) or Valerie Strauss (Hillary Clinton: Most charter schools ‘don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them’) who posted first about Hillary Clinton’s critical comments on charters — the Washington Post doesn’t timestamp its stories. But […]

LAUSD Board of Education eyes growth of charter schools LA Daily News: The focus of the board’s deliberations will be a controversial $490 million plan to more than double the number of charter schools in Los Angeles. See also KPCC LA. Next L.A. schools chief: A politically savvy educator who’s a superhero? LA Times: The people have spoken […]

Inside The Classroom: The Immigrant Experience by The Hechinger Report — Beacon https://t.co/75IVvps98J — Barbara Kantrowitz (@bkantrowitz) November 5, 2015 The folks at the Hechinger Report are exploring crowdfunding as a new way of engaging with readers and raising revenue. Using a site called Beacon, they’re raising funds from readers for a project called Inside The Classroom: The […]