The Network for Public Education will release its major new report “Valuing Education,” ranking the states on how well they support their public schools.
Carol Burris and I will appear at the National Press Club at 1:30 pm in Washington, DC, today Feb 2 to reveal our evidence-based survey.
If you are in DC, please join us.

Can’t wait to see how my home state fares!
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“D”
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“Because federal funding declined, and state funding stayed about the same, local funding grew in importance. Local funding now accounts for 46% of education spending — the highest percentage of the total education pie in the last decade, noted Stephen Cornman, an NCES statistician.”
http://hechingerreport.org/school-spending-per-student-drops-for-a-third-year-in-a-row/
I wonder if this eventually causes a real disconnect.
Schools rely more and more on local funding with the drop in federal and state funding, yet they have less and less control over how the money is spent, because of this:
“There certainly is an effort afoot in the country to dismantle local government and reduce or eliminate the role of local school boards,” said Thomas Gentzel, executive director of the National School Boards Association.
State takeovers were once a rarity, but they have become increasingly popular as the number of states controlled by Republicans doubled between 2010 and 2014.”
If ed reformers want to run schools at the federal and state level, they probably have to fund schools at the federal and state level. Ed reformers want all the power with none of the responsibility.
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Was New York’s ranking determined before yesterday’s bombshell lawsuit by the NYC public advocate?
“”The failure of this [special education tracking] system has been one of the city’s worst-kept secrets. The program doesn’t work and never has.”
Mayor de Blasio has had complete control of the school system for more than 2 years. The “glitches” have affected an astounding 16,000 –16,000! — children, who have not gotten the services legally mandated by their IEPs. It gets worse: the DOE has also lost $354 million dollars in Medicaid reimbursements while squandering $130 million on software that doesn’t work.
http://www.wnyc.org/story/public-advocate-sues-new-york-city-over-special-education-tracking/
Perhaps instead of obsessing over charter schools, the mayor and chancellor should have been doing something to help these many thousands of kids.
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Do you mean the kids charters either refuse to accept or drive out if they test poorly
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Tim,
Special education was a mess under Bloomberg.
Charters push out kids with disabilities. I didn’t know you cared. Deflect.
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Bloomberg? The mayor who left office only 763 days ago?
De Blasio has been aware of this issue since shortly after he took the oath. His DOE hasn’t done anything to remedy the situation and it has rebuffed complaints about it. 16,000 children are affected. Hundreds of millions of precious dollars down the drain.
And because the mayor happens to be from the right party, hands out goodies, doesn’t close schools, and doesn’t think Eva should be supported, enabled, tolerated, this is all met with indifference. Long live mayoral control!
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It’s worth noting that this isn’t really a “lawsuit” in the sense of a complaint that alleges that somebody has violated a law, committed a tort, or breached a contract. It’s a petition for “summary judicial inquiry,” which is basically a request that a court order a public hearing. The petition doesn’t allege that the DOE broke any laws (it only has to allege that the DOE violated a “duty”), and it appears to be almost entirely on information that is several years old. The dollar figures are certainly all pulled from reports about Bloomberg-era DOE. James’s affidavit opens by stating that the petition is based on a “lengthy and thorough investigation” that her office conducted. What follows is largely a cut-and-paste job from old IBO public reports and several paragraphs peppered with the phrase “It is my understanding that . . . .”
This isn’t to say that there’s nothing to the petition’s allegations. It stands to reason that if the DOE was unable to track this data in 2014, it’s unable to do it today. Nobody can turn this ship around.
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How many times have I told you: you don’t sell the steak, you sell the sizzle.
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I sent the linked map to my city newspaper education reporter and to my representative on the Ohio Bd. of Education.
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Peter Greene spotlights the NPE Report Card:
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/02/npe-national-public-ed-report-card.html
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