A few noteworthy articles and announcements that have come to my attention:

KQED Forum to explore college issues

Tune in KQED radio’s Forum at 9 a.m. Wednesday for a two-hour exploration of issues faced by first-generation college students and their families. Host Michael Krasny will  broadcast live from Downtown College Prep in San Jose, the first charter school in Santa Clara County and a 10-year successful partnership between the school and San Jose Unified. The largely Hispanic school recruits students who aspire to college but have not done well in middle school and prepares them for a four-year college.

Panelists will include Michael Kirst, Stanford emeritus education professor, writer and an authority on the transition between high school and colllege,  Downtown College Prep founder and executive director Jennifer Andaluz, principal Michael DeSouza, counselors from James Lick High in East San Jose and from Santa Clara University, as well as graduates of the charter school.

An archive of the show will be available at KQED’s web site, and the second hour will be rebroadcast at 10 p.m. Wednesday.

Education groups on NCLB

With author Diane Ravitch giving the Obama administration some swift kicks in the shins on the directions the president has taken on education, a coalition of 18 civil rights and education groups have rallied behind him. They wrote a detailed open letter last week expressing fundamental support for the administration’s approach to the reauthorization of NCLB, school interventions, competition-based funding and school accountability.

“We embrace the Administration’s push to compel increasingly intensive interventions in low-performing schools,” it said.

Signing organizations: Citizen Schools, Citizens, Commission on Civil Rights, Civic Builders, Colorado Succeeds, Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCan), Democrats for Education Reform, Education Equality Project, Education Reform Now!, Hope Street Group, Mass Insight Education and Research Institute, The Mind Trust, National Council of La Raza, Parent Revolution, Rhode Island Mayoral Academies, Rodel Foundation of Delaware, State of Black Connecticut Alliance, Texas Institute for Education Reform, UNCF (United Negro College Fund).

More on Ravitch

Speaking of Diane Ravitch and her new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, her former research assistant offers an eloquent defense from from critics who chastise Ravitch for switching positions on issues she once held dear. Writes Diana Senechal in the blog Core Knowledge,“But there is much more to her views than a flip or a turn. There is wisdom, scholarship, and a sense of the complexity of education. If her changes can be reduced to a U-turn, then the earth does not orbit, nor does a room have shape.”

For another perspective, Harvard government and  education policy professor Paul Peterson dismisses “her book-length, passionate diatribe against choice and accountability” in a piece in the Hoover Institution’s Education Next blog.

“Amazingly, she rages against the very school choice arrangements that are creating schools willing to try out the curricular reforms she favors,” Peterson writes. Peterson and Ravitch serve together on Hoover’s Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, though I wonder if she and others on the task force will break bread together anytime soon.

Craft of Teaching

The lead piece on last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Building A Better Teacher, is attracting a lot buzz – deservedly so.  Writer Elizabeth Green’s piece is a great read that cuts through polemics and ideology polluting the debate over education and looks at  the mechanics of teaching, particularly classroom management, as key to improving teaching skills. A hero of the piece is Doug Lemov, who has analyzed effective teaching; his book “Teach Like a Champion: The 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College,” will be out next month.

The piece also makes a pitch for in-depth subject knowledge, along the lines of Intel Math that teaches the principles and concepts behind elementary and middle school math. The article’s implication: Intensive training on techniques and subject matter can vastly improve the effectiveness of teaching. A point that needs to be emphasized as dollars-desperate districts  prepare to cut the few remaining teacher training days in the budget.