…Brownsville, Texas. The other finalists were Aldine Independent School District, Texas; Broward County Public Schools, Florida.; Long Beach Unified School District, California; and Miami-Dade County Public Schools.
The New York Times notes Brownsville’s honor comes on the same day that Texas authorities announced that the district had failed to meet achievement targets for two years under NCLB.
This is a bit of a stunner that amazingly has gone unnoticed until A-Rus picked up on it: The Gates and Broad Foundations are reportedly winding down their support for Ed in ‘08 well short of the promised $60 million. The Puget Sound Business Journal reported last Friday — and no one else seems to have followed up — that Gates and Broad have stopped contributing to the campaign after putting in a total of about $24 million.
The foundations say the campaign has made education an important issue, and there is no need to spend more. A program officer with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said the Seattle-based foundation believes it has accomplished the goal of making education a topic for candidates, after contributing $16.4 million, and is not likely to spend more on the effort between now and Election Day.
“If we spend less than the maximum, it is because it is a reflection of the strategies we are executing,” said Marie Groark, senior program officer with the Gates Foundation. She acknowledged that it’s a tough environment for the issue to gain traction. “We are aware that there are significant competing priorities on the agenda,” she said.
“I think it is clear that we have embedded into the mindset of the campaign that the crisis of our schools is an essential part of the domestic policy program,” Marc Lampkin, executive director of Strong American Schools tells the paper.
Glad it’s clear to Lampkin. That’s one down. Eduflack writes a passionate eulogy for Ed in ‘08 here.
Roland Fryer is poised to become one of the most influential people in education research, leading a $44 million dollar effort to test the efficacy of various educational theories. The New York Times reports the Harvard economist has quit his job as New York City’s “chief equality officer” to run the Educational Innovation Laboratory. Funded largely by Eli Broad, the effort “is intended to infuse education with the data-driven approach that is common in science and business.”
“If the doctor said to you, ‘You have a cold; here are three pills my buddy in Charlotte uses and he says they work,’ you would run out and find another doctor,” Dr. Fryer tells the Times. “Somehow, in education, that approach is O.K.”
Those who have followed his work will not be surprised to learn the first idea to be put under the microscope are incentive programs that reward students for good grades and passing standardized tests, an idea closely associated with Fryer in New York City.
