Alexander Russo

Screengrab from FiveThirtyEight. My basic feeling is the more coverage of education there is, the better. And I’m particularly excited about newer outlets like VICE, Vox, AJAM, Mic, and FiveThirtyEight taking on the job at least some of the time.  But there are obvious perils to having new outlets dip into education issues only occasionally, and FiveThirtyEight […]

In the media and in real life it seems clear that the charter school “backfill” issue is big and getting bigger — especially in districts where charters are a large and growing percentage of students: A new report on charter backfilling is coming up from the University of Washington’s CRPE soon. A national charter group […]

Today’s education roundup includes lots of coverage of the new Nevada education voucher, which Republican lawmakers plan to try and get passed in other states, plus a bit about Democratic Presidential candidates’ meetings with the AFT: In Nevada, the ultimate in school choice or school as a commodity? Washington Post: The new law, which the state’s Republican-controlled […]

It’s easy to forget or ignore that education writers and editors are themselves the products of their own individual education experiences (for better or worse) and oftentimes have to make school and education decisions for their own children.   Traditionally, journalists and news outlets keep mum about these background experiences, which is understandable.  Sure, it […]

Pictured: LAUSD’s district police department got one of these through the surplus program but returned it after news got out. Kudos to Rolling Stone and writer Molly Knefel for digging out the school district impact of the White House announcement on civilian law enforcement use of military surplus gear. As you may recall, it was […]

Today’s education news roundup includes states like California trying to figure out how to explain new (probably lower) Common Core test results to parents and the public, and states setting all sorts of different minimum score requirements for a new teacher evaluation system known as edTPA: Schools face challenge of explaining Common Core test results […]

One of the things that bothers me most is when education debates (and the coverage surrounding them) are based on partial or incomplete information.  Sometimes, the limits are unavoidable; complete or comparable information just isn’t available for some obvious reason. Other times, however, the information is out there, it just hasn’t been publicized or collected or […]

Today’s education news roundup includes an update on how parents are using the so-called “parent trigger” in LA and a call from the AFT’s Randi Weingarten to ditch Common Core cut scores: Testing the power of the parent-trigger law Hechinger Report: In Los Angeles, the parent-trigger law, once considered the fast track to turning struggling California […]

It’s not like DeRay McKesson (@deray) needs any more publicity. He’s a one-man social media machine with 134,000 followers. He’s maxed out on Facebook but you can still follow him there. He’s been on cable news, been named one of Fortune’s top 50 influencers, etc. He and Johnetta Elzie were featured prominently in the May 10th […]

Once in a while rival outlets end up covering the same topic at roughly the same time.  As noted in Education Week that’s what happened not too long ago: San Francisco Papers Squabble Over Special Reports on School Diversity. Both publications — the long-running San Francisco Chronicle and the upstart SF Public Press  — took on the […]