Online Smart School

Charter schooling is almost 20 years old, and charter management organizations (CMOs)—integrated networks of charter schools, like KIPP—have been around for ten of those years. In the new issue of Ed Next, Jim Peyser, former chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education and now managing partner at NewSchools Venture Fund, writes about CMOs, in particular the ones funded by NewSchools, and, in particular, what we can learn from the good ones.

Please read “Unlocking the Secrets of High-Performing Charters” or the accompanying press release.

Rick Wash , assistant professor in the department of Telecommunications, Information Studies and Media and the School of Journalism at Michigan State University, has been awarded a National Science Foundation grant to explore technical problems in the area of “crowdfunding.”

Crowdfunding sites solicit members of the public to contribute small amounts of money for a particular cause. SI students utilized crowdfunding this year to raise funds for the Alternative Spring Break program on the site Crowdrise.com. Such sites are an example of a commonly studied problem called a “matching marketplace,” where two types of people come together to be matched according to some criteria. Other examples include job search sites and online dating sites.

This project brings together ideas from both computer science and economics. Both disciplines study matching problems, but neither has found a completely satisfactory solution in the presence of complementarities. Wash’s research will develop an understanding of the role of complementarities in both of these types of solutions and apply insights across fields to design better methods of matching.

The project will test these ideas in the real world by developing a crowdfunding system. Crowdfunding is increasingly being applied to fund high-quality professional journalism , and improved crowdfunding systems have the potential to be a new funding source for this struggling industry.

Rorotoko ran a great piece by William Egginton about his new book, In Defense of Religious Moderation, under the provocative headline above.

Egginton goes on to explain:

The current debate around religion in America has been dominated by fundamentalists and atheists.

The fundamentalists have managed to set a tone for political discourse in America in which no one can be elected without advertising his personal relation to God. The atheists, in turn, have disparaged religious belief in general as the root of all evil.

Neither of these positions adequately represents the beliefs of the majority of Americans: people who identify themselves as Christians, Jews, or Muslims without for a moment believing that those who believe differently are for that reason wrong.

Indeed, fundamentalists and atheists do not even represent truly opposing positions—unlike the moderately religious they are unified by their implicit belief in the code of codes.

Whether one is a fundamentalist does not depend on one’s commitment to a particular religious creed or, in fact, to any religion at all. Rather, fundamentalist thinking stems from an unconscious belief that the various codes we use to understand the world are all versions of a single, underlying master code, a code of codes that contains the ultimate truth of everything. Given this understanding of how fundamentalism works, the best way to counter it is not to attack its religious manifestations with anti-religious doctrine. Instead, the most effective remedy for today’s rash of fundamentalist thinking is religious moderation.

That is because moderate religious beliefs question the very idea of the code of codes as a possibility of human knowledge.

It is the moderately religious with their inherent skepticism of any single master code, in other words, who are best suited to protect science, politics, and all other individual codes of knowledge from being commandeered by the fundamentalist logic of the code of codes. By learning to break the code of codes, religious moderates can take a decisive step toward leaving behind the destructive fundamentalist tendencies that have plagued our times.

continue reading the rest of the essay here

Gus Chan, The Plain DealerThe Cleveland Municipal School District is considering leasing space for its 400 central-office workers and began soliciting proposals from landlords Wednesday. Renting would clear the way for appraising and auctioning off the headquarters on East Sixth Street.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — From the moment he started work in the Cleveland schools’ downtown administration building, Chief Operating Officer Patrick Zohn thought it was an ideal location — for a hotel.

He could soon find out whether developers and hotel operators agree.

The school district is considering leasing space for its 400 central-office workers and began soliciting proposals from landlords Wednesday. Renting would clear the way for appraising and auctioning off the headquarters on East Sixth Street.

How much the property would fetch is unknown, but Zohn senses opportunity. He and others think a hotel would fit naturally into the six-story stone structure, done in grand beaux-arts style and completed in 1931. Other possibilities include condos or offices.

Across St. Clair Avenue from the administration building, construction of the new medical mart and convention center is under way. PlayhouseSquare, pro sports venues, the site of planned casino and a reawakening Flats area are all within a half-mile radius.

“There’s a higher and better use for this location,” said Zohn, who was a consultant to cities on stadium and arena projects before joining the district in March 2010.

Zohn said he has received at least a call per week about the property since word of a possible sale got out earlier this year. He would not disclose names but said he has heard from developers with solid credentials.

Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants, which specializes in reuse of historic buildings as boutique or “lifestyle” hotels, already has cast an eye on the property.

The San Francisco company plans a hotel for the old Schofield Building at East 9th Street and Euclid Avenue, but often undertakes multiple projects in a city, said Tom Riley, vice president of acquisitions and development.

“The location would certainly be fantastic,” said Riley, who recently drove past the school headquarters to check it out. “I don’t know how it would lay out as a hotel.”

The idea of redeveloping the administration building has been kicked around since the 1980s, but gained momentum earlier this year when then-interim Chief Executive Officer Peter Raskind embraced the concept.

Raskind hired Weston Development of Richmond Heights to determine how much office space would be needed to house the district administration. The firm says the district needs a maximum of 70,000 square feet, about a third of what the employees occupy now.

Weston figures that the district can save about $600,000 a year by leasing in a soft downtown office market. The estimate is based on $1.4 million a year in rent, compared with nearly $2 million to operate the school building and catch up on needed repairs.

Zohn said some sections of the administration building are like rabbit warrens because of ad-hoc partitions. There is no central cooling system, creating stifling conditions year round.

“That’s a huge drawback,” said Mark Horton, Weston’s president. “Especially when half the windows aren’t operable.”

But Zohn’s former business associate, Thomas Chema, doesn’t see anything that would discourage developers. The building’s exterior reminds him of traditional European hotels. He can envision suites branching from the white-marble corridors.

“It’s kind of a mess inside, but the bones of that building are really good,” said Chema, who guided development of Cleveland’s Gateway sports complex and now serves as president of Hiram College. “I would expect it would convert very nicely to a hotel.”

Hotels in downtown Cleveland have struggled with high vacancy rates, but the market is expected to improve after the medical mart and casino open, said David Sangree of Hotel and Leisure Advisors, a Cleveland consulting firm that works with the industry.

Sangree said developers might find the building’s historic character exciting, but will consider the site near the medical mart even more attractive.

“The historic part of it is good, but the location is key,” Sangree said. “We do have a lot of historic buildings in Cleveland. You don’t make most of them into hotels.”

Thomas Ott on Twitter @thomasott1

Yesterday, two days before the state board of education was slated to announce Ohio’s new state superintendent, a second of the three finalists for the job removed himself from consideration. And the word on the street is that he exited the race over money, something the board could have prevented.

Last month the board selected three finalists from forty applications: Steve Dackin, superintendent of Reynoldsburg (Ohio) City School District; Robert Schiller, education consultant & former Michigan and Illinois state superintendent; and Robert Sommers, Director of (Ohio) Governor’s Office of 21^st Century Education.

Sommers was an early favorite. He has experience in virtually every sector of the K-12 education system. Further, as Governor Kasich’s point-person on education, who could be better to implement the governor’s education policy reforms? As it turned out, Sommers was too close to the governor to serve as state superintendent, at least in the eyes of the Ohio Ethics Commission. The commission advised Sommers that if he became state superintendent, the state’s “revolving-door” rules would prevent him from communicating with his former employer for one year. Being state superintendent is challenging enough, but to do it without regular access to the governor and his staff, who are driving much of the state’s reform work? That’s a recipe for impossibility. (Yes, Ohio’s revolving-door rule is a bizarre one, at least when applied to cases of people moving jobs within state government; as Mike Petrilli commented to me, “That’s like saying Margaret Spellings couldn’t have become Secretary of Education.”)

Now the board’s tightfistedness may have cost a second finalist. Dackin announced yesterday that he was removing himself from consideration and signing a four-year contract extension with Reynoldsburg. The district is expected to give him a $25,000 raise in order to keep him around, bringing his salary to $145,000 before bonuses. The grapevine reports that the salary amount discussed between Dackin and members of the state board of education for the state post was unworkably low.

Is Ohio trying to get top-notch leadership for a key position on the cheap? Possibly.

The right salary for the job is certainly debatable. Deborah Delisle, who resigned as state superintendent in April, made $194,500. Her predecessor, Susan Tave Zelman, earned more than $200,000. In Florida, Eric Smith made $245,000 as education commissioner. Members of the Ohio governor’s cabinet make anywhere from about $116,000 to $182,000, and the governor himself is paid $144,000.

Consider also that next door in Indiana, where the superintendent position is a statewide elected office, State Supt. Tony Bennett makes about $80,000 per year.

But if Dackin did make his decision based on money, his last-minute withdrawal is the board’s own fault. Ideally, the board should have been flexible about how much to pay the person they decided to hire. But if that weren’t possible, why not make the salary limitations clear to all candidates months ago?

The board had intended to announce the new state superintendent tomorrow, and all bets were on Dackin. What happens now? The board doesn’t have to hire Schiller tomorrow; its timeline is self-imposed so it may re-open the search and beat the bushes for more candidates. Stay tuned to Flypaper for the latest.

We are pleased to announce the acquisition of Wallflower Press books. (For a listing of Wallflower books)

Columbia University Press has acquired worldwide rights to publish nearly 170 backlist titles from UK publisher Wallflower Press and will continue to publish approximately 15 new titles a year under the imprint named Wallflower Press beginning in September 2011 as a wholly owned imprint of Columbia University Press.

Dedicated to publishing high-quality peer-reviewed books in film studies, Wallflower Press was founded in London in 2000 by Yoram Allon. Columbia University Press has been its exclusive book distributor in North and South America. The addition of Wallflower Press’s list to Columbia University Press’s already prestigious and award-winning publications in film studies makes Columbia University Press today one of the largest publishers of academic books on film in English worldwide.

“As everyone knows, bookselling has had some tough years recently,” remarked Jim Jordan, president and director of Columbia University Press. “When Wallflower Press found itself unable to sustain business on their own after some financial setbacks, we decided to explore an alternative to losing a client that had served us well for ten years. Acquiring the publishing rights to their list and creating the imprint is the best way to keep Wallflower Press’s outstanding list around for years to come.”

Effective immediately, Columbia University Press will sell and market Wallflower Press titles outside of North and South America through our worldwide sales partnerships, including University Press Group in Europe, Footprint in Australia, and our usual sales channels throughout the rest of the world.

The Wallflower Press imprint will feature the well-known series that has defined the Wallflower Press brand as cutting-edge exploration of film theory, practice, television, and media studies such as Short Cuts, 24 Frames, and Directors’ Cut. Yoram Allon, as a freelance editor, will continue, along with his team, preparing manuscripts for publication and working with Columbia University Press and Wallflower Press’s authors.