Welcome to Ed100

You want to help make education work better. But where to begin? As a parent, teacher, leader, or concerned citizen, how do your efforts fit in?

There are many competing ideas about how to improve education; Ed100 systematically explores them in plain language. In about 100 core posts, Ed100 aims to help you make sense of the big picture.

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Unlike most blogs, Ed100 is built on a long-term structure. The first 100 posts explore the following proposition: Education is Students and Teachers spending Time in a Place for learning with the right Stuff and a System that $upports Success. Subsequent posts call attention to important developments and help put them in the context of the big picture.

How Dare You!

I recently sent a brusque email reply to a colleague. Yes, of course that was a dumb thing to do. But then again, she had it coming, right? How dare she!
Indignation is a powerful emotion. It brings out our inner knuckle-dragging primate, primed for a fight.
At school we learn math, …

A Tandem Bike for Local-State School Finance

In 2013, most California education-watchers expect two policy debates about school finance. Two is not enough; there will need to be three.
Weighted student funding
The first debate will probably be about how to inject a level of principle into the capricious way that state funds are apportioned to school districts. The …

A Caricature of Partisan Values

As a sometime marketer, I take a kind of sick interest in the way that candidates and parties work to position themselves in the minds of voters. But it is even more interesting to inspect the ways that the parties work to reposition voters’ perceptions of their opponents. Add it …

Should California’s Teachers Vote With the Governor?

Nearly half a million of California’s voters are teachers. Like other voters, they will soon have to decide how to mark their November ballots. They will certainly scratch their heads over Propositions 30 and 38, competing measures that would ease the damage of four years of steady budget cuts.
Should teachers …

Those Good-For-Nothing Moms!

This weekend, America will observe Mother’s Day for the 98th time since it was officially added to the calendar in 1914. Of the 85 million mothers in America, about 5 million are stay-at-home moms, society’s great good-for-nothings.
Officially, motherhood is worthless. Unpaid work does not count in economic statistics, so moms officially contribute …

The EdPrezi

About ten years ago, I left the private sector and set out to learn about the challenges of improving public education, especially in my home state of California. I sought out people with differing perspectives and a clear and informed point of view. As I learned, I began synthesizing and writing for …

California’s Ed Finance Morass

In a few short months, California voters will again take up their part-time role as legislators. As usual, we will be asked to weigh in on policy questions of great complexity in the blunt form of a yes-or-no vote on initiatives.
Several important measures will relate to education funding and finance, …

How Should the Success of Schools Be Measured?

This entry first appeared on TOPed.org in answer to the question “How should we measure our schools?”
The success of schools, per se, must not be our primary concern. Schools, after all, are only a means to an end. The center of the proverbial target is simpler, but even more …

Schools Are Like Businesses

This entry first appeared on http://toped.org
Schools are like businesses, but not in the way most think.
I frequently find myself in conversations comparing “how it works in business” with “how it works in education.” A popular version goes something like this:
Schools are like factories. They take raw materials (kids and textbooks) …

Less School = More Problems

It appears ever more likely that California state revenues for education will come up short, again, abruptly. When the money comes up short there are only a few ways to make the numbers work:

employ fewer teachers,
reduce their wages, or
reduce their hours.

School districts across California will have to choose door #3 …