docketED

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Your guide to legal issues that arise in a new era of education.

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New Orleans, defining public education anew -- through choice

Brian Dassler, principal of the KIPP Renaissance High School in New Orleans, and David R. Colburn, who served as provost from UF from 2000 to 2005 and now runs the university’s Ruben Askew Institute on Politics and Society, note that states and school systems would do well to study the ingredients that lifted the city’s public schools. Central to that success, the pair argues: The school system “provided real choice to all families regardless of their financial means. What had been a luxury afforded only to higher-income families in the past is now available to every parent in the city.”

No Child Left Behind demands we employ every option for poor children

In his Washington Post commentary today on reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is...

One Florida mother shows how choice promotes equity

Gardner supports providing parents with more options, but he sees a disconnect – and, ultimately, a lack of fairness – between the perception of public school choice and the frustration parents experience when facing the admissions criteria school districts have established. He doesn’t address how private learning options can resolve that conflict, but it’s Florida’s program, in particular, that can help bring fairness to a process that supposed to empower the parent.

Unions must fear lost membership more than lost teacher tenure

Rick Scott will be inaugurated as Florida’s 45th governor in just eight days, following one of the nation’s closest gubernatorial...

What accounts for teacher quality? A school's grade provides only part of the answer.

I was skeptical about Florida’s school grading system when it was implemented, but the benefits have been undeniable. Schools and school districts have focused more resources on low-income and minority students and, as a result, these student populations have seen significant improvements in their standardized test scores. But my research suggests Florida’s school grades do not reflect differences in teacher quality between schools. Instead differences in test scores seems to be caused by differences in student demographics and school leadership.

Tuthill on teacher empowerment: charter schools encourage teachers to start their own shop

Williams wants to introduce his own charter initiative in Alabama and asked Doug for advice on how he should proceed. Doug's reply: Don't let your opponents falsely claim that an expansion of schoool choice is an attack on public school teachers and public education.

The liberal nature of vouchers? Look to your history.

While it was economist Milton Friedman who submitted the idea for school vouchers in his 1955 essay, “The Role of Government in Education,” the voucher movement got a jumpstart soon afterward from liberal intellectuals and activists and Democratic lawmakers, particularly from Harvard social scientist Christopher Jencks, Berkeley law professor John Coons and Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Mr. Secretary, we don't drown students in Florida

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan brings an intellectual heft and a genuine compassion to his job, which is why he can’t be excused for his duplicitous talk on learning options for poor children. That word, duplicitous, is unusually harsh. So please allow me to try to defend it with three of his own statements, made all within a 29-minute span, to a distinguished audience at former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's National Summit on Education Reform in Washington earlier this month.

Does going to the best school matter? Only if it's the best fit.

RedefinED host Doug Tuthill is fond of talking about his choice of high school years ago for his son in St. Petersburg, Fla. While Tuthill is known in these parts for launching the first International Baccalaureate school in Florida, the magnet school he chose for his youngest son has long been considered a failure in terms of academic achievement. Of all the schools he could have picked, he picked a school the state had graded an “F.”

Bipartisanship over choice is becoming contagious

Today, redefinED host John Kirtley appears on the St. Petersburg Times' education blog, the Gradebook, with an essay that showcases the increasing bipartisanship evident in providing school choice for underprivileged students. "For far too long, the important debate over whether we should provide private learning options for low-income schoolchildren has been a source of friction in education circles and partisan combat in political quarters," Kirtley writes. "But when Oprah Winfrey spotlights the desperate needs of these children and some of the private schools that are turning around their lives, we can safely conclude this issue is now mainstream."

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