Weekend Reads

State of Black America

The 2009 report from the Urban League finds that:

Blacks remain twice as likely as to be unemployed, three times more likely to live in poverty and more than six times as likely to be imprisoned, according to the group's annual State of Black America issued Wednesday. (CNN)

Policing the tests

What's the role of police on testing day in D.C.? Crime fighting? Uh uh., not under Michelle Rhee's brand of school "reform."

D.C. police will be deployed to pick up truants and deliver them to classrooms. Administrators are urged to schedule testing in the morning when students tend to do better. But not too early for high school kids, not generally known as morning people. (Washington Post)

Mission Accomplished?

Eli Broad is counting his chickens before they're hatched. In a Detroit Free Press op-ed, he counts Washington, DC among urban school districts that "have successfully turned around after producing abysmal student outcomes." (Public School Insights)

Broad sounds a little like Bush on the carrier. But this is how they measured success over at AIG where Broad used to rule the roost.