- We're awaiting word today on what district has won this year's Broad Prize for Urban Education, the holy grail of edu-reform. Last year's winner was New York City. This year's finalists are Miami-Dade County, Florida; Broward County, Florida; Brownsville, Texas; Aldine, Texas; and Long Beach, California. At the great new Gotham Schools blog, Philissa Cramer writes that Miami-Dade, though they've been nominated three times, isn't a front-runner; Superintendent Rudy Crew has been bought out of his contract, accused of mismanaging the budget and failing to reach out to the community. And by the way, casting doubts on the Broad Foundation's success at choosing truly stellar districts, Miami's test scores did outpace the rest of Florida's last year, but Florida test scores are horrible. Over half of schools in the state missed their targets for reading and math proficiency.
- But what does testing really mean, right? Check out this New York Times piece on how NCLB proficiency standards are sort of like the sub-prime loans of the education world: State education departments promised steeper and faster gains than they could actually deliver. And now they're defaulting.
- Lastly, our friend Kevin Carey writes today at Inside Higher Ed about the under-the-radar struggles of our urban public universities and community colleges, in particular the University of the District of the Columbia. At UDC, the six-year graduation rate is just 19 percent, and the most common math courses are at the ninth- or tenth-grade level. Kevin calls the situation "catastrophic." Indeed. I think part of the solution must be more practical, vocational education for many of the students who end up at such colleges, who've already been failed by the K-12 system and whose immediate concern is building an economically viable future.
--Dana Goldstein
Update: The winner of the Broad Prize is Brownsville.
