Three quick-hits from the world of education reform that share a common theme:

1.) Cuts in President Obama's proposed 2010 budget
Fresh off a $100 billion victory in the form of increased federal school spending in the stimulus package, some school reformers are now upset that the President has proposed to eliminate eleven "ineffective" programs altogether from the department of education's portfolio and reduce or re-fashion several other programs.

Although the department of education's overall outlays would increase $1.3 billion, or 2.8 percent, to a new total of $46.7 billion (not including the stimulus spending), some advocates had been hoping for a larger increase. Included in the programs to be cut are: the $295 million Safe and Drug-Free Schools State Grants; $133 million in abstinence education; $66 million in college access challenge grants, and others such as a $7.5 million gifted and talented program, $33.5 character education program, and more (full list here). Most of the programs were cut after internal review found the programs to lack evidentiary support of their effectiveness, and the abstinence education program was replaced with a teenage pregnancy prevention program.

The bottom line? Overall good news in the next two years for school spending advocates, but not every school-related program survived the Obama team's scalpel.

2.) Three out of four aspiring elementary school teachers in Massachusetts failed the math section of the state's licensing exam
The headline here may be that 73% of new elementary school teacher candidates in Massachusetts can't do math, and that our teaching force is woefully inadequate. There will be inevitable back-fire from teachers unions and the like saying that the tests are inaccurate, that you can't judge how good a teacher is based on a math exam, and so on. But to me, the real headline is that Massachusetts is doing something important: shining a light on the teaching profession in a public way. Now, I'm not sure that this is the kind of data that drives a straight line to student achievement (it would be better to have public data on how much each teacher's students learned in any given year) but maybe it's a start.

3.) LA Students threaten a walk-out
350 students walked out of a pair of Los Angeles High Schools to protest imminent school spending cuts in LAUSD yesterday, and more walk-outs are threatened for today.

The students are apparently upset that as many as 2,500 teachers may be fired as a result of California's woeful budget crisis. As much as I am a staunch supporter of student activism, my question for the students is a simple one. If you, the students, had the power to control which teachers should be kept and which should be let go, could you identify those teachers who you don't think are doing a good job teaching you and who don't care about your academic progress? It certainly can't be the case that every LA teacher is an excellent one, and it certainly can't be the case that these students are saying so (in fact, the arguably more common student protest is not a protest to save a certain teacher from administrative action, but rather protests to encourage administration to do something about a persistently negligent teacher).

So if this assumption is correct--that the students could identify a number of teachers at each school who they would let go if they had the power--then the real problem that the students are protesting here is either: 1.) any budget cuts to schools whatsoever (which may be valid from a priority standpoint, but not when you look at the state's books), or 2.) the fact that the LAUSD powers -that-be and their teacher union counterparts will invariably agree to fire not the 2,500 worst teachers, but the 2,500 least tenured ones. That, as the students are arguing, would be a tragedy, but it's a tragedy better served by a protest sign reading, "Fire Mr. X because he just shows movies all year, not Mrs. Y who is a great first-year teacher" than a sign reading "Save Our Teachers." I've worked in a crumby public school before (in St. Louis), and the reality is sad but simple: not all our teachers deserve saving.