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Today, after the normal cutoff date for hearing bills, the Senate Ways and Means  Committee will take public testimony on SB 6576.  This bill requires school districts to charge for the reasonable cost of responding to public records requests.  Chargeable costs include the actual classified personnel costs to conduct the search, review, redact, and copy the records.  School districts must provide a written estimate of the cost within ten business days of receiving the request for informati

Neerav Kingsland, chief strategy officer for New Schools for New Orleans, has written a great open letter to urban superintendents across the nation.   The five parts of this letter have been published this week in Rick Hess’ Education Week blog, starting with Part I on Monday, January 23 and ending tomorrow, Friday, January 27th.

Mr. Kingsland says this to the urban superintendents:  Stop trying to be Reformers of your centralized bureaucracies.  Start being Relinquishers of power.  Give that power to independently run charter public schools. 

The News Tribune published a smart editorial about education reform over the weekend.  It is called "School reform can't wait for a booming economy."  

It is well worth reading. Check it out here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/01/15/1984005/school-reform-cant-wait-for-a.html.  

Leading digital learning innovators have just released this letter warning that a single common national test would stifle innovations in learning.  Led by Innosight Institute, the organization led by  Clayton Christiansen and Michael Horn, authors of the 2008 book Disrupting Class, signatories to this letter are seeking to influence the design of the federally-financed national test now being developed by two consortia of states, the Partnership for As

A national journal reports that Washington’s Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction now admits that the cost of implementing the national Common Core Standards Initiative here will exceed $300 million.

School superintendents are telling lawmakers that reducing the school year by five days will fix their budgets, report  the Everett Herald and Seattle Times.  This shows that they care more about increasing and maintaining the pay of school employees than about providing school days to children.       

Last night at the Seattle Public Library, author Steven Brill told an audience of about 150 people that “It is like I am on Pluto, the Democratic party is so powerful that there aren’t charters here.” 

To be fair, in 2004 Democratic Governor Locke signed the charter school bill sent to him by a Republican Senate and Democratic House---the state teachers’ union repealed it through an initiative.