Dropout Nation: Coverage of the Reform of American Public Education Edited by RiShawn Biddle

The Dropout Nation Podcast: The Next Steps for Race to the Top

RiShawn Biddle — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:44:21 +0000

On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, I look at the efforts by the Obama administration to bring districts into Race to the Top and offer some steps that could make the reform work even more effective. This includes turning school districts pioneering school reform efforts into enterprise zones of sorts, freeing them from restrictive state laws and collective bargaining rules.

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod or MP3 player. Also, subscribe to the podcast series. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, Podcast Alley, the Education Podcast Network and Zune Marketplace.

The Dropout Nation Podcast: Fostering Impromptu Leaders for School Reform

RiShawn Biddle — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 09:00:29 +0000

On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, I comb through school desegregation efforts in this past century to show how school reformers can foster new leaders from the most-unlikely of men and women. For school reformers inside the Beltway and elsewhere, fostering these “impromptu leaders” from outside education through use of technology and by getting together with them can help make reform efforts sustainable.

The Dropout Nation Podcast: Parent Trigger: More Than A Gimmick

RiShawn Biddle — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 14:45:22 +0000

This week’s Dropout Nation Podcast focuses on California’s parent trigger school reform law (along with Connecticut’s efforts to pass a similar measure) and why the arguments against it from such skeptics such as Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews and Diane Ravitch don’t stand up to scrutiny.

The Dropout Nation Podcast: Building Ties Between School Reformers and Grassroot Activists

RiShawn Biddle — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 01:51:41 +0000

On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, I explain why school reformers need to reach out to grassroots activists. Inside-the-Beltway policymaking, important as it is, will mean nothing for improving the educational destinies of children if school reformers don’t reach out to urban groups such as the Black Star Project and activists working in suburban and rural communities.

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod or MP3 player. Also, subscribe to get the podcasts every week. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, Podcast Alley, the Education Podcast Network and Zune Marketplace.

The Dropout Nation Podcast: Why Civil Rights Activists Should Embrace School Reform

RiShawn Biddle — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 17:57:56 +0000

On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, I explain why the NAACP, the Civil Rights Project at UCLA and New Jersey’s Education Law Center should abandon their tried and truly counterproductive approaches to improving equity and equality for the nation’s poor black and Latino children and embrace approaches offered by the school reform movement.

Update: You can now download the Podcast from Zune Marketplace.

The Dropout Nation Podcast: Leave No Child Alone

RiShawn Biddle — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:20:18 +0000

On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, I analyze President Barack Obama’s efforts to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act and argue why neither he — nor school reformers — should bother with reauthorization this year. Pursuing reauthorization may allow for Obama to put his finishing touches on the law, but not without exposing it — and himself — to battles between reformers and defenders of traditional public education that he isn’t likely to overcome.

The Dropout Nation Podcast: The High Cost of Teacher Pay

RiShawn Biddle — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:42:01 +0000

On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, I discuss what will likely be the most-important driver for reforming how teachers are evaluated, compensated and given tenure: The high costs of traditional teacher compensation being borne by America’s taxpayers — including more than $367 billion in unfunded retirement healthcare liabilities for teachers and million-dollar lifetime retirement payouts — as seen in battles in Vermont, Pennsylvania and Indiana.

The Dropout Nation Podcast: Beyond Dropout Factories

RiShawn Biddle — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 23:44:52 +0000

On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, while profiling one of America’s worst school districts, I explain how the failures of every school district isn’t just a problem of teachers unions. School leadership at every level is critical in turning around dropout factories, the academic failure mills that feed into them, and the school districts that operate them all.

The Dropout Nation Podcast: Looking Beyond Race to the Top

RiShawn Biddle — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 22:38:16 +0000

This week’s Dropout Nation Podcast focuses on the “canaries in the coal mine of education” that aren’t addressed by the Race to the Top reform effort. Addressing special education, the overdiagnosis of learning disabilities and reforming America’s juvenile justice system are as much keys in stemming the dropout crisis as expanding school choice and improving teacher quality.

You can listen to the podcast on this Web site below this post, listen on the RiShawn Biddle radio page (along with other Webcasts). Subscribe to the feed or download to your iPod on iTunes.

The Dropout Nation Podcast: Giving Parents Power

RiShawn Biddle — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 21:27:47 +0000

As you finish playing with your Christmas presents, listen to the new Dropout Nation Podcast. This week, the podcast focuses on the role parents must play in the new education paradigm, the impact of moves such as Los Angeles Unified School District’s parent power reform and what school reformers must do to accomodate the interests of parents in their policymaking efforts. You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod or MP3 player. Also, subscribe to get the podcasts every week. It is also available on iTunes.