More Arne Duncan hoopla: Alexander Russo hits up his friends at Catalyst Chicago for more data on the

A key to stemming dropouts can be found in a series of bound volumes. Read to your children -- and to the kids that aren

Secretary of Education-Designate and finds him lacking. As always. Joanne Jacobs hopes Duncan will actually live up to expectations from the school reform movement.

Darling-Hammond: Still lurking: Mike Petrilli speculates that the Obama adviser may land inside the Department of Education anyway — this time overseeing the National Center for Education Statistics and all important What Works Clearinghouse as head of the Institute of Education Sciences. This is all just guessing. But if true, then putting the wolf in charge of the henhouse may have never been so wrongheaded. After all, Darling-Hammond is no Joe Kennedy and IES is not the SEC.

And more Petrilli: This time, teaming up with the Grand Pubah of the conservative end of the school reform movement to propose another federal path for education reform. One part of this ‘fourth way’ — using federal dollars to encourage states to pursue systemic overhauls and experiments — seems similar in a way to Andy Rotherham’s proposal last month to encourage innovative reforms. On the other side, the proposals to eliminate No Child’s school transfer, teacher quality, school sanctions and testing rules means that Petrilli and Finn are all but calling for a gutting of the law. More analysis later, but one can expect the EdTrust/EdSector/rest of us wing to first think: “With school reform allies like these…”

Dropping out early and often: A third of dropouts leaving the Rowan-Salisbury school district are freshmen, reports the Salisbury Post. Of course, these aren’t 15-year-olds, but 16-year-olds who never earned enough credits to move on to sophomore year. At the same time, the North Carolina school district seems to have another problem: So-called “career and college tech” tracks that allow students to evade a strong, useful college prep education that, by the way, can be used by those who want to go into welding or other skilled trades. The students don’t take Algebra II, even though the course teaches math skills used in manufacturing. High dropouts. Unchallenging curricula. What a formula for success.

Eduwonkette should lighten up: So writes EdSector’s Erin Dillon in response to the blogger’s tirade over the Washington Post’‘s fine series on the performance and governance of the Beltway’s charter schools. Dillon is particularly amazed that Eduwonkette — no pal of school choice or education reform — would use the American Federation of Teachers’ notoriously rubbish 2004 report on charter schools, which attempted to make conclusions that no one could actually reach based on the actual data itelf. Attempting to use broad national data to criticize a news organization’s report on one local school district is, umm, destined to be embarrassing for the person who does so.

And yes, Dropout Nation is back. Check out the sister Web site for some of the work that has kept your occasionally haggard editor away for a while.