I love lists, I love education, and I love to tell people about things. So it should be no surprise that my attention was caught by yesterday’s news release from Stanford: “Hoover Institution Education Experts Identify News Media Hits and Misses in 2012 Education Coverage.” The Koret Task Force on Education named five stories that were well-covered and five that were neglected. First, the hits:
- Charter schools
- Teachers’ unions
- Special education
- Pre-Kindergarten education
- No Child Left Behind
Next, the misses:
- The cost of teachers’ pensions
- Common Core academic standards
- International comparisons of student achievement
- Online or digital learning
- Louisiana’s education reforms
Guess it’s probably no mystery that yours truly didn’t encompass anywhere near the whole of the Task Force’s analysis. Because all the “misses” received some due attention here. I covered #5 a number of times in 2012, most recently less than two weeks ago. One of our major themes here is item #4, including this important posting from October. Coincidentally, #3 was the theme of yesterday’s contribution. As to #2, my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow just last week interviewed Dr. Bill Evers — the coordinator of Koret’s education media project — about it.
And what about #1? It’s been several weeks since I made the case to stop yelling at TABOR and start fixing Colorado’s PERA.
But even better, I’m thrilled to be able to bring readers’ attention to a brand new report by the National Council on Teacher Quality called No One Benefits: How teacher pension systems are failing BOTH teachers and taxpayers. This report doesn’t offer a lot in the way of brand-new, startling findings, but it does bring them together fairly comprehensively to show the path both to fiscal sustainability and a more effectively aligned teaching profession.
The need for PERA reform is still very real, and the new NCTQ publication provides an important contribution to that debate. Guess that means I also love solutions, too.