I bet this will be my most viewed blog.

The big news here is that Gates, as many people already knew, will be moving away from its focus on the creation of small schools. It will be interesting to see what happens to the small school movement, particularly those districts that are in the middle or early stages of development.

Here is an excerpt from Liz Green’s piece from Gotham Schools. You can view her entire report here.

The plan will transform the foundation’s education work from
expensive but quiet investments that focus on a relatively small set of
schools to higher-profile advocacy work that keeps up the investments
in individual schools but also touches on several political hot buttons.

Among the projects the foundation will tackle: a $500 million
investment in experimenting with performance-based teacher pay systems;
another $500 million toward creating data systems like the ARIS
warehouse in New York City; ramped-up advocacy work pushing for
national standards; and a research effort to create a national test
that would be distributed to states and school districts across the
country, free of charge.

So, what does this mean for arts education? On the surface of it, not much. I guess if the arts are part of the national standards and accompanying national test, that might be a doorway, but that’s tricky, very tricky.

You can view the Seattle Times’s piece here. The Atlanta Journal Constitution has a slightly different take.

More to come on this. Of course, there is no one who sounded the bell for national standards and curriculum more than Diane Ravitch. It will be interesting to see what she has to say.

More to come on this, I am sure.