The Education Doctor is in

I've virtually bumped into a new education blogger in Nashville. The Education Doctor's inaugural post was on July 15 and since then the 11 posts to date have been informative and thoughtful. This from the About page:

Welcome to my blog devoted to educational issues in Nashville and Tennessee more generally.

Who am I? I’m no insider to educational politics or Metro schools. What I am is a scholar and informed observer of educational news. With talk of more charter schools and mayoral control there’s a lot going on in the schools right now. I will bring a fresh perspective to these discussions. In doing so, I’ll explore what the research tells us about what works in education and bring in data to shed some light on current debates. Hopefully together we can find the prescription for Nashville schools.

The doctor is in.

I've no idea who this anonymous blogger is but I welcome them to the conversation. A couple of snips to pique your interest:

Self Governed Schools: "Third, despite the head of the AFT (Al Shanker) leading the call for charter schools in 1988, teacher unions opposed charter school laws after he stepped down. This was partly due to the intermingling of advocates for autonomy and innovation with anti-union rhetoric blaming union rules for the existing system’s inflexibility. Whether this was deserved or not, it shaped the charter school debate. Unions are now trying to get back into the charter school discussion by opening unionized charter schools. It will be interesting to see how the discussion of Self Governed Schools evolves and whether they in turn provide competition to charter schools."

What's the SCORE?: "The practices highlighted are good ideas. And they may in fact be leading to positive outcomes for the communities that are pursuing them. But it’s not clear these are the most evidence-based practices."

AYP, part 2: "Here’s what we know so far. MNPS has 30 schools on the high priority list. This means that 22% of their schools have failed to meet standards for 2 years in a row. The problem gets worse by grade level as 10% of elementary schools, 20% of middle schools, and 33% of high schools are high priority."

You might want to add The Education Doctor to your RSS feed.