Worth A Read

A regular Sunday feature…

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• Coming to a City Near You: Common School Performance Measures
• 200 Million Test Scores and What Do We Know? Studying Educational Opportunity with Big Data
• Pennsylvania School Tax Burden
• Seven Things I Learned from Attending a Charter School Board Meeting
• The Wisdom of Mandatory Grade Retention
• Why I left a profession that I love

Coming to a City Near You: Common School Performance Measures Posted: 05 Oct 2016 09:00 PM PDT Robin Lake discusses a new report on how cities have developed Common School Performance Frameworks (CSPF), which are “a set of performance metrics developed locally that apply to all schools, both district and charter.”

200 Million Test Scores and What Do We Know? Studying Educational Opportunity with Big Data Posted: 04 Oct 2016 09:00 PM PDT Sean Reardon, Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at Stanford University, will be giving a free, live streamed Ed Policy seminar this Friday October 7th from 11-12:30 PM EST. “Talk Abstract: We test students a great deal in the United States. In grades three through eight alone, U.S. students take roughly 50 million standardized state accountability tests each year. Their scores on these tests, aggregated within geographic school districts and student subgroups, provide a useful proxy measure of the sum total of educational opportunities available to children in different communities and groups.”

Pennsylvania School Tax Burden Posted: 04 Oct 2016 09:00 PM PDT “In [this] policy brief, ‘Pennsylvania School Tax Burden,’ Gregory Collins examines how the new formula directs state basic education funding, how it is allocated to local school districts based on need, its ability to pay, and the local school tax effort. ‘Pennsylvania School Tax Burden’ examines the claim that differences exist in local school tax burdens across Pennsylvania’s 500 districts.”

Seven Things I Learned from Attending a Charter School Board Meeting Posted: 03 Oct 2016 09:00 PM PDT Nancy Flanagan writes about her experience attending a charter school board meeting. “I’m still mulling over what to make of this. When schools are unsafe or plagued by low achievement, I understand [the] parents’ desire to have options. But GTA’s [Grand Traverse Academy] test scores are, at best, average – and sometimes significantly lower – compared to surrounding traditional public school.”

The Wisdom of Mandatory Grade Retention Posted: 01 Oct 2016 09:00 PM PDT Brian Jacob discusses mandatory grade retention in Michigan. “Last week, Michigan’s legislature passed a bill requiring schools to hold back third-graders who fall a grade-level behind in reading. If Governor Rick Snyder signs the bill, Michigan will become the 17th state to adopt such a policy. Mandatory grade retention is clearly popular, at least among many state legislators. This is understandable given the importance of early reading skills for future outcomes and the shockingly low levels of basic reading proficiency in many communities. But is it good policy?”

Why I left a profession that I love Posted: 14 Sep 2016 09:00 PM PDT Brianna Crowley discusses her decision to leave teaching after only 9 years. “But if I’m honest, those frustrations weren’t the real catalyst for leaving. Teaching is a (mostly) awesome profession where I had the honor of  leading 110 unique souls every day. I left not out of frustration with the bad, but instead to follow a passion, to pursue a dream. I left because I want to change the system.”