I\u2019ve been away, so education periodicals have been stacking up on my desk, and on a balmy Friday night I am multitasking as I watch the USC-Oregon State game (Holy Cow! They won.\u00a0 Fight ON!)<\/p>\n
K12 Inc. <\/b>saw its stock price tank from a high of $37.85 to $17.60 after criticism by hedge fund manager Whitney R. Tilson, Education Week<\/a> <\/i>reported.\u00a0 By Nov. 1, it had rebounded to $18.47.\u00a0 After talking to K12 leaders, Tilson said he was convinced the company was \u201cnot evil,\u201d not targeting students that were sure to fail, but that the program worked less well with challenging students than with those who had a college-educated parent at home tending to the home schooler\u2019s lessons.<\/p>\n In our case study of CAVA<\/a>, the California K12 charter management company, we came to similar conclusions.\u00a0 Virtual learning depended on a real parent or other supervising adult.\u00a0 The California schools suffered from a disconnect between its marketing arm and those delivering education.\u00a0 Despite some interesting innovations, it\u2019s not an educational silver bullet.<\/p>\n \u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n Inequality. <\/b>\u00a0Robert Reich\u2019s new film Inequality for All<\/a> <\/i>deserves attention.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know whether it will raise the social conscience about poverty the way An Inconvenient Truth<\/i> did for global warming.\u00a0 But the toll of inequality on American families is immense, as is the strong tendency on the political right to blame the victims and indulge in chatter about government rewarding the lazy and undeserving.<\/p>\n So, is no wonder that schools are filling up with poor children.\u00a0 Child poverty has risen in every state.\u00a0 In 17 states, including California, students in poverty are a majority of students statewide, according to an analysis by the Southern Education Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n Even the Economist<\/a> <\/i>has weighed in on the declining share of productivity gains accruing to labor (or in their case labour).<\/p>\n The political surprise is that declining incomes has created a war on the poor rather than a war on poverty.<\/p>\n (For a dramatic lesson, see Suzan-Lori Parks\u2019 in the Blood, <\/i>a retelling of the Scarlet Letter in which Hester is a welfare mother, who is systematically victimized by those who are supposed to be helping her.\u00a0 Claremont colleges students did an impressive job with difficult material in a Pomona College theater department production over the weekend.<\/p>\n \u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n Education journalist John Merrow <\/b>declared that he was finished writing about Michelle Rhee, this after he had trouble placing articles critical of her reign in Washington, D.C.\u00a0 But as I suspected, that didn\u2019t last long.\u00a0 This week he weighed in<\/a> on a report by Stanford University professors James Wyckoff and Thomas Dee found that the D.C. teacher evaluation system known as IMPACT was raising teacher quality.<\/p>\n Problem is, says Merrow, that no one correlated the evaluation system\u2019s rankings with student performance.\u00a0 Chances are that a highly ranked teacher would be in an upper income area and lower ranked teachers would be teaching poverty students.\u00a0 Merrow doesn\u2019t think the evaluation system is measuring teacher quality as much as it measures student poverty.\u00a0 \u201cIf you want to be a highly effective teacher in Washington, choose your students carefully! On the other hand, if you want to increase the chances of losing your job, teach poor kids,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n \u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n