Richard Rothstein’s critique of the Obama education plan points out something often overlooked in the rush to free market competition: if you demand applications, you need grant writers. If approved, you need evaluators. As he points out, “a full employment program for grant-writers is no substitute for stable employment for educators.”

Article here.

I’m glad this study has been released and look forward to reading it; the “we’ve brought more AP courses into secondary schools” mantra is popular among urban school reformers, mostly because they get credit for setting up the courses. Later, when the results are released, they either don’t get publicized or the leader who set up the classes is gone. Sounds great — we’ve started 80+ AP courses — but does it really matter when neither the students nor the pupils have been set up to succeed?