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Among my son's favorite books are the ones in Richard Scarry's Busytown series. In What Do People Do All Day? , Able Baker Charlie puts too much yeast in the dough, resulting in a gigantic, explosive loaf of bread that the bakers (and Lowly Worm) need to eat their way out of. The opposite problem -- a lack of yeast -- is present in Michelle Rhee's recent op-ed in Education Week . In it, she limits her call to "rethink" teaching policy to "how we assign , retain , evaluate , and pay educators" and to " teacher-layoff and teacher-tenure policies." (And she casts the issue of retention purely as one about so-called "last-in, first-out" employment policies rather than about school leadership, collaboration or working conditions.) The utter absence of any focus or mention of teacher development either in this op-ed or in her organization's ( StudentsFirst ) expansive policy agenda leaves me wondering if Rhee believes that teachers...

In a recent post on Education Week 's Inside School Research blog, Debra Viadero offers a caution about President Obama's support for community colleges. Pointing to her recent article on community college research that indicated how much more we need to know about how best to improve completion rates in that sector, she questions whether the president would be wiser to place his bets on career colleges. She says that a recent study by the Educational Policy Institute (EPI) and an ongoing program of research by James Rosenbaum and colleagues support her contention that community colleges ought to take cues from career colleges. In my opinion, this talented reporter is jumping to conclusions. Yes, the graduation rates at two-year for-profit colleges exceed those at two-year public colleges. No one disputes that. That does not necessarily mean, however, that career colleges are outperforming community colleges, or that community colleges should take steps to become more like ...