Alexander Russo

On Upper West Side, Fariña says school integration can’t be forced on parents Chalkbeat: Fariña displayed little sympathy for parents seeking to keep hold of their 199 seats at all costs, saying that overcrowding will only be solved through “hard decisions,” not “fairy dust.” But she also declined to get behind alternative zoning proposals floated by parents, […]

Screengrab from NYT story on a Success Academy school in Fort Greene. Here are 5 quick questions/thoughts re Thursday’s big @katetaylornyt @successcharters story http://ow.ly/U15fB  that’s eating up my Twitter feed and taking over Nuzzel. Direct from Twitter: 1: Abundance of parents willing to go on record raises questions about @newshour claim that they could only find 1; 2: […]

There’s much to like about this recent NPR story (Forcing Schools To Hit The ‘Reset’ Button) as a piece of narrative journalism. It tells the story of a North Carolina school that was one low-performing and is now doing much better — albeit with a much-changed student demographic. There’s some great tape — Lyndon Johnson […]

.@alexanderrusso I give up. Your @AFTunion donors must really be putting the squeeze on you today. good luck — Campbell Brown (@campbell_brown) October 23, 2015 From Campbell Brown: “I give up. Your @AFTunion donors must really be putting the squeeze on you today.” I’ve learned in the last six months that there are few folks […]

Rough Student Arrest Puts Spotlight on School Police NYT: As common as the officers and their arrests have become, there are no generally accepted standards for how they should be trained, used, armed or organized. No one even knows for certain how many there are — most experts estimate between 10,000 and 15,000 nationwide. Assaulted […]

Now more than two years old, Politico’s education page has become a pretty well-accepted part of the daily education journalism ecosystem. And a big part of that endeavor is the morning news roundup/tipsheet, called Morning Education. There’s some news, some spin, a sponsor or two (including the NEA), and a lot of links to reports, […]

The deadline to apply for the much-desired Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship (which I was lucky enough to do) is January 31, so start getting your ideas and application materials together. There are some changes to the Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship for next year, including acceptance of four (rather than three) fellows and a reduction in […]

American Kids Have Disappointing Reading And Math Scores, But There Are Some Bright Spots HuffPost: “One downturn does not a trend make, and that’s what we’re comfortable in saying about the data,” Peggy Carr, acting commissioner of NCES, said on a call with reporters. “We’re trying not to read too much into a decline at this point.” […]

There are a couple of notable updates on the PBS NewsHour segment on Success Academies you should know about, including a Slate column that updates us on some of the legalities, a commentary from the PBS Ombudsman, and a response from the head of the NewsHour. In Slate, columnist Michelle Goldberg cites another FERPA expert […]

There are lots of stories out there that haven’t gotten enough (any) coverage. Here are some that come to mind from last week’s EWA teacher preparation seminar: *Student teachers, all aboard! Starting in January or so, student teaches start popping up in veteran teachers’ classrooms, learning about how real schools work.  Clinical practice is supposed to […]