Race to sanity

Must-read Brooks on RttT --- Yep, there continues to be lots of chatter about RttT as a policy vechile for incentivizing reform. See this terrific David Brooks commentary on race to sanity. We think Brooks makes huge sense and so do a number of our friends at the White House.

Kalamazoo to you too

From all accounts last Monday was an amazingly inspiring day for the students and teachers of Kalamazoo when the Prez came to town to deliver his promised commencement speech for the winners of his national competition. Here is what an eye witness wrote to us "President's speech was a thing of inspiration and beauty. Everyone in this town is walking taller for it. My friends the teachers are inspired and glowing. And a generation of teens here are going out in the world to 'make a difference.' good stuff. ".

Racing to the right top

On this the Sourcerer fourth birthday we wish to share with you this enlightened article by David Brookes in this Sunday's New York Times about the right kind of federal role in education. He thinks the most practical and effective approach is to incite reform rather than command it. He applauds this strategy in the Race to the Top "contest" and thinks Obama is on the right track here. We agree with Brookes that "Over the past decades, federal education policy has veered between the incredibly intrusive to the appallingly supine". RttT is the Goldilocks of federal ed policy: just right.

Data Rich, Information Poor, Knowledge (what)?

Marty Orland of WestEd hits a home run with this piece in Ed Week about the importance of translating data into information (and ultimately knowledge). We think it is time to change the name and focus of the Data Quality Campaign to the Knowledge Use Initiative!

Unleashing a new knowledge and innovation era

Knowledge Alliance has gotten a bit feisty about the role of evidence and knowledge in stimulating innovation and change in k12 education. Check out this testimony to the House approps committee and the call for a knowledge and innovation revolution in teaching and learning.

Research for the Blueprint

Last week the ED released a very interesting series of reports outlining the research upon which Obama's Blueprint for ESEA reauthorization was based. This has been a long time coming and worth a good read (which we have yet to do---more next week). Check it out here and let the Knowledgeable Sourcerer know how you would rate the ED's use of the evidence.

i3 not venture investing?

"i3 is not venture investing" --- Hmmm. We have been loving the way that the Investing in Innovation fund acknowledges the importance of evidence in innovations processes and linked different types of evidence to levels of funding. But there is another more pessimistic way to look at this: i3 is about what works rather than about what might work but we don't know yet. So says Tom Vanderark on his blog. What do you think?