Alexander Russo

Last night’s PBS NewsHour included a segment on the challenges facing newly-minted teachers heading out into the job market — including the high attrition rate for new teachers in the classroom. “If and when they do get hired, chances are at least 40 percent of them will leave teaching in the first five years,” intones […]

Today’s education news includes a White House summit on reforming school discipline, plus a small but growing number of free online AP lessons, and a fine for a Philly teachers union for violating campaign finance limits: White House Hosts School Discipline Summit PK12: The department’s civil rights data collection shows that more than 3 million students are […]

The good folks at Inside Philanthropy wrote recently about the growth of foundation-funded education journalism. The piece (More Funding Is Flowing for Education Journalism. Is That Okay?) asks some good questions and provides some basic information – but doesn’t really get at the underlying question of if or how philanthropic funding affects coverage. The overall tone […]

A Matt Yglesias article and accompanying chart posted on Vox yesterday purported to make the case that the housings costs of homes near high-performing public schools (top right quadrant) make them inaccessible to many middle- and low-income families, and that there are strong disincentives to letting more people live in those areas or dis-connecting school assignment and […]

Today’s news includes more about childhood poverty, a look at Kasich’s education record, some good news for testing opponents in the ESEA rewrite that’s headed to conference: The U.S. Is Letting Poor Kids Fall Further and Further Behind in Reading Slate: Break this figure into subgroups and the picture looks even grimmer, with 39 percent of […]

Remember last week’s kerfluffle over whether the Washington Post’s writeup of a new education site/effort that is being headed by former CNN host Campbell Brown was fair and neutrally-worded?  Sure you do. What I’d forgotten in the heat of the moment is that this wasn’t the first time I’d taken some objection to the media […]

Asking around about the coverage of the ESEA renewal debate in the Senate last week, nothing major has come up — no giant mistakes or obvious gaffes. As noted below, Vox and Politics K-12 were singled out for their work.   This is a good thing.  However, there were some issues that got raised about […]

Today’s news include the annual KIDS COUNT report, showing that more kids are poor than in 2008 before the recession, and some looks ahead at the House-Senate conference to come up with a new version of ESEA/NCLB. More children are in poverty today than before the Great Recession PBS NewsHour: Today, 22 percent of children live in […]

There’s a new documentary coming out soon called “The One That Got Away,” which explores education issues in a more balanced and thoughtful way than many other films of this kind in recent years. Screened recently at the Montclair Film Fest (where it’s based) and at Scholastic in Manhattan, it tells the story of a charismatic, bright […]

Word began trickling out Friday afternoon that the Huffington Post’s lead education reporter Joy Resmotvits was leaving the site for another education writing job — on the West Coast, if I understand correctly. Usually, an education reporter’s change of venue wouldn’t be notable. These days, it’s mildly surprising when the move isn’t to something outside […]