Joanne Jacobs

Common Core standards “will have little to no effect on student achievement,” predicts Tom Loveless, in How Well are American Students Learning? , a report by Brookings’ Brown Center on Education Policy. The quality or rigor of state standards doesn’t correlate with students’ reading or math performance on NAEP, Loveless concludes. “State standards have really never been able to penetrate down to the classroom and affect teaching and learning.  Common Core advocates believe this time is... Read Full Story

RESPECT, which stands for Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence, and Collaborative Teaching is the administration’s new competitive grant idea for education. The $5 billion would reward states and districts that work with teachers and their unions, education schools and others to remake teaching. Education Secretary Arne Duncan gave no specifics, but Ed Week’ s Politics K-12 suggests some possibilities: . . . overhaul teachers’ colleges to make them more selective, create... Read Full Story

The nation’s higher education system is costly, unaccountable and unwilling to change , say business leaders interviewed for a Public Agenda report. For-profit colleges whose students are eligible for federal aid charge 75 percent more than for-profits that don’t participate in aid programs, a new study finds. That confirms a theory that increasing student aid leads to increases in tuition. Read Full Story

A Texas law meant to help home-schooled students qualify for college has spawned diploma mills, reports KHOU-TV in Houston. Public colleges and universities have to accept the diplomas as valid, though one girl paid $600 for a diploma before learning the Navy considers it worthless. Lincoln Academy  awarded a diploma to a basset hound  named Molly, who took the test online. And what was Lincoln’s “test” like? Doggone laughable at times, with questions like “a triangle has how many sides... Read Full Story

Strict discipline is part of the “secret sauce” at the Noble Network of Charter Schools in Chicago, which runs 10 high-performing high schools in low-income areas. That includes  charging students $5 for the cost of detention if they’re caught in minor violations: Carrying energy drinks or chips, chewing gum, failing to tuck in a shirt or tie shoelaces when asked, carrying a permanent marker or sleeping in class can lead to a three-hour detention, reports the Chicago Tribune . Noble’s 10... Read Full Story

Time is the enemy of completion , argues Stan Jones of Complete College America .  Even if colleges rein in tuition hikes, students are unlikely to make it to graduation unless they commit to a study plan or pathway. In rural Kansas, community colleges provide the only job training available. As Pell Grants expanded, more Kansans enrolled. Read Full Story

Opera star Placido Domingo calls for requiring music education in an interview with John Merrow. Learning Matters’ full music education story will air on  PBS  NewsHour  this week. It features Domingo conducting a concert of New York city students from P.S. 129 and 152 as part of the  Harmony Program , which offers free after-school music education to mostly low-income students. ( Click  here  to download the podcast ) Read Full Story

Love is the theme of this week’s Carnival of Homeschooling , which is hosted by Tiffany of As For My House. Read Full Story

As part of a Black History Month program, kindergarteners at Tipps Elemementary School in Houston were sent home with lyrics to a  chant lauding Barack Obama , reports The Blaze . It includes “Barack Obama is the man” and “He’s our man, yes we can!” A note to teachers said students would be “required” to learn the chant, though the school claims only some students were chosen for the evening program and parents could refuse to sign a permission  form. Joe “Pags” Pagliarulo, a syndicated... Read Full Story

President Obama’s budget includes $8 billion for the Community College to Career Fund , which would fund partnerships between local employers and colleges to train 2 million people for high-demand, high-paying jobs. In the State of the Union speech, the president called for colleges to become “community career centers.”  That phrase was repeated by Education Secretary Arne Duncan yesterday at a press conference, along with several references to America, an economy and a workforce  ”built to... Read Full Story