Alexander Russo

I don’t have anything in particular against parents who start charter schools or parent activists who help organize others to fix struggling district schools, but the stories I read about them this weekend both seemed problematic to me in ways that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s not that there’s anything obviously wrong […]

In case you missed it in last week’s deluge of back to school stories, NPR did a segment about the need for more welders that included the claim that the lack of trained welders was due to NCLB and its focus on math and reading. USA Today education reporter and EWA board member Greg Toppo […]

Laurene Powell Jobs Commits $50 Million to Create New High Schools NYT: With an advertising campaign that looks as if it came from Apple’s marketing department, the initiative [XQ: The Super School Project] is meant to create high schools with new approaches to education. Over the next several months, the teams will submit plans that could include efforts like […]

BEST OF THE WEEK Hechinger: Teachers wanted: Passion a must, patience required, pay negligible ow.ly/S5J50 LA Times: The best and worst things about being a student of color. http://ow.ly/S6GZm NYT Magazine: Xavier University’s Prescription for More Black Doctors http://ow.ly/RZrpi Slate: How Common Core Changed Teachers’ Jobs http://nzzl.us/s5a6UWg The 74: The Forgotten Students of California’s Drought […]

In case you haven’t seen it, the AFT and friends have launched their own site on Medium called Schoolhouse Voices. It’s mission is “raising up the voices of educators, school staff, policy makers and leaders on issues that make a real difference at the school level.” So far, it’s featured stories by Randi Weingarten, Joshua […]

By and large, Dale Russakoff’s new book about Newark schools has been applauded as well-reported, carefully balanced, and eye-opening. Unlike many other books these days, there were fact-checkers involved in the process and Russakoff ran portions of the book by sources to ensure accuracy. If there are any concerns about Russakoff’s accuracy in reporting the complicated […]

Less Than Half of CA Students Made the Grade on New Common Core-Aligned Test Slate: A total of 12 million students in 29 states took some version of these new Common Core-based assessments developed by Smarter Balanced and PARCC this year. See also EdSource Today, LA School Report, Cleveland Plain Dealer. 2016 Candidates Slam Common Core, But […]

When I had the chance to interview Tulane’s Doug Harris (pictured above) last month, Andrea Gabor’s  NYT oped about NOLA had not yet come out. But I was surprised to find out that he was not as concerned about some of the articles that had already come out about New Orleans, such as Jennifer Berkshire’s […]

Less Than Half of Students Achieve Proficiency on Calif. Common-Core Exams State EdWatch: California students performed better on the English/language arts section of the Smarter Balanced exam than in math, according to scores released by the department Sept. 9. See also KPCC, LA Times, Bakersfield Californian.  Obama Promotes College Affordability Plan on Michigan Trip NYT: At an event near […]

It’s great when education reporters use available public polling data to help readers understand what others think about key issues, but can be problematic when they rely on one poll’s results that don’t match what others have found. That’s what happened in this recent AP story that’s been published in various forms in a variety […]