Quick Hits from the July 12th Edition of Education Week

Let’s hear it for and hear it for the Detroit Public Schools, who managed to get on the cover of Education Week for all the wrong reasons. From the article ($):

On June 26, school officials announced that 800 positions must be cut before school starts this fall. The next day, they scrambled to explain how a now-fired district employee mishandled nearly $1 million that must be repaid to the federal government. And on June 28, school board members approved a $1.4 billion budget that counts on $105 million in labor concessions, to which the president of the teachers’ union said, “No way.”

The article goes on to say that about 12,000 students have fled the district, many to charter schools, and they’re expecting another 9,000 student hit this year.

They’ve got a good plan in place to make things better, though. That plan: Great PR!

What district officials and some board members do talk about is the need for a better marketing strategy to counter what they say is a widely held, but largely inaccurate, perception that charter schools are doing better academically than the regular public schools.

The phrase “lipstick on a pig” runs through my head, but I don’t know why.

Georgia is going to lock 4-year tuition rates, meaning that the tuition you pay as a freshman will be the same when you are a senior. Anything that makes it easier to plan for the costs of college is a good thing—I like this proposal.

The Department of Education is starting to withhold funds from states that are out of compliance with the NCLB mandates. Texas will take the biggest hit, losing more than a million dollars. As more and more states fall out of compliance with NCLB--and they surely will--this will be a continuing trend.

The spokesman for the Kansas Board of Education has resigned after six months on the job. I can’t possibly imagine what would have driven him off. What job could be easier? Nothing ever happens in Kansas.

In an article about the Weighted Student Funding report that Fordham published, it says that Marguerite Roza “chose not to endorse the report because she wants to remain neutral on the topic.” That’s kind of funny, being as in the report she’s pictured (with a quote) on page 10. I personally see being pictured in the report as far more of an endorsement than being one name among 70-something on the signing pages, but what do I know?

Finally, one of the commentary articles has this interesting factoid: 15 percent of the nation’s high schools produce close to half of its dropouts. If that’s true, it’s a scary statistic.