The Grade

BEST OF THE WEEK PolitiFact: Does Trump University have an ‘A’ from the Better Business Bureau? Not really. http://bit.ly/214MasL Washington Post: Meet the man behind the new SAT: ‘I’m in the anxiety field.’ http://ow.ly/Z5fMy  NYT: With Fewer Members, a Diminished Political Role for Wisconsin Unions http://ow.ly/YQHnt NYT: Debate Over Chicago’s Low-Scoring Sizemore Academy & Other Afrocentric Schools http://pllqt.it/l8wKlF […]

Screengrab from Slate’s Deray Mckesson story from last month. A couple of weeks ago at Slate, American Prospect fellow Rachel Cohen took a look at the already much-covered candidacy of Deray Mckesson for Baltimore mayor and suggested among other things that the Black Lives Matter co-founder and TFA alum was going to be forced to run on […]

At GOP Debate, Candidates Talk Detroit Public Schools, Common Core PK12: Kasich said he’d like to slim down the U.S. Department of Education, but didn’t say whether he would bail out Detroit public schooos. Baltimore school police officer in video was fired as sheriff’s deputy in 2003 Baltimore Sun: Spence was one of two Baltimore sheriff’s deputies who were […]

As you may recall from just a few days ago, the New York Times obtained and published video of a Success Academy teacher dramatically ripping up a student’s work and telling her to do it over. The video and accompanying story went viral. But the Times wasn’t just Internet shaming an individual teacher for her […]

Jarring New Video Shows A School Police Officer Kicking A Black Teen HuffPost: Four seconds, three slaps, two profane words and one kick. That’s the narrative of a disturbing new video that appears to show a Baltimore school police officer assaulting an unidentified male teenager at Reach Partnership High School.  See also Washington Post, AP. Baraka calls […]

Pretty much any story about AltSchools, the new private micro-schools popping up around the country, raises concerns about hype and overcoverage. There’s also a long and unfortunate history of education coverage focusing on novelty items rather than core issues, creating the impression that innovation rather than structural changes, can improve education at scale. (I should know, […]

Thousands of New York City Students Deprived of Special-Education Services, Report Says NYT: The city’s Education Department said that its data systems were so unreliable that it was not exactly sure what percentage of students were not receiving the services. See also WNYC, Chalkbeat. Refugees Say N.Y. School District Blocked Them From Going To High School NPR: Utica City […]

There are a number of new efforts to bring more diverse backgrounds into journalism going on these days, including a new Fusion Fellowship program that’s just launched in California and includes a bunch of journalists and activists some of whom — it looks like — might be interested in school-related issues.  You can read all […]

Very Few Teachers Receive Poor Job Ratings, And New evaluations Haven’t Changed That Washington Post: Are the new evaluations — many of which incorporate test scores or other measures of student learning — any better at identifying poor teaching? Not really, according to a new working paper by Matthew Kraft of Brown University and Allison Gilmour […]

 There were times — as during the interview segment above — that I wished Melissa Harris-Perry asked tougher questions of her guests.  (See Let’s Sharpen Up The Questions & Corrections, Interviewers). But she’s far from the only TV host who treats folks who show up as guests rather than subjects. And at least she was […]