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[This post has been updated to include a comment from Jon Schnur.]

WASHINGTON, D.C. —  Jon Schnur, the education policy expert who has been working as an advisor to President Barack Obama and played a pivotal role in writing the federal stimulus plan for schools, will not serve in the Obama administration. He will instead return to running the nonprofit principal-training program New Leaders for New Schools group that he co-founded, according to an e-mail he sent recently to members of New Leaders.

Schnur is one of the most high-profile members of the next-generation “reform” camp of Democrats, who push for dramatic changes in public schools, including strong accountability measures. He had been named as a likely chief of staff to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and was serving as a senior adviser to Duncan, helping him craft the education part of the stimulus bill.

Schnur’s close role in the administration had been seen as a signal of its direction on education, suggesting that the president was siding with the camp of education advocates that includes Schnur (and for which we singled Schnur out as a spokesman), rather than with the camp that is more skeptical of recent accountability efforts.

As word of Schnur’s plans spread around Washington, D.C., the major question I’m hearing people ask is why he is not entering the administration — and what that says about the administration’s direction. (I am in D.C. for the annual meeting of the Education Writers Association, where I am becoming a board member.) (more…)

Has President Obama finally picked a side in the education wars? Three prominent New Yorkers are worrying that he is at least leaning — and that it’s not in the right direction.

Deborah Meier, the respected small schools pioneer, said President Obama’s appointment of Arne Duncan as education secretary “leaves me sad.” Today, Diane Ravitch, the NYU historian and Meier’s blogging partner, described Duncan as “Margaret Spellings in drag.” “This is not change I can believe in,” she wrote in Politico. And on Saturday, Ann Cook, another small-school movement doyenne, said she is also concerned about  Obama’s choice of Duncan.

All three women sympathize with the “Broader, Bolder” manifesto, which argues that schools alone cannot be expected to close the achievement gap and whose members are more suspicious of popular innovations such as charter schools and test-driven accountability systems. Schools Chancellor Joel Klein leads another camp, which strongly supports test-based accountability, the No Child Left Behind law, and charter schools. Klein’s Education Equality Project circulated a rival petition.

Obama made a point of not selecting a side in the debate. He chose two top education advisers, one from each camp. And he touted his chosen education secretary, Duncan, who had signed both petitions, as a pragmatist. But in the last few weeks, concerns about Duncan have begun to surface. (more…)

Flypaper and Politics K12 report dramatic differences between the House and Senate stimulus bills’ education allocations. The House bill includes funds for three things teachers unions often oppose: performance-based pay, education data systems, and a separate pot for charter schools. The Senate bill has none of these things.

Mike Petrilli says this reflects the divide inside the Democratic Party on education issues, and it’s hard to argue against that. The question I’d like answered is, which bill did the Obama administration have the most say in writing?

Update: As Leonie points out in the comments, I originally said Senate where I meant House and vice versa. House version has the reformier stuff.

Now that Barack Obama has been president for more than a day, it’s a good time to ask once again what his deal will be on education.

Fortunately, I have a wonderful opportunity to do that tonight, at a panel discussion Bank Street College of Education is putting on. The talk, titled “School Reform: Where have we been and where should we be going?” will feature Linda Darling-Hammond, the lightning rod Stanford professor who advised the new president on education during his campaign.

Given the latest flurry of concern about who’s going to staff the U.S. Department of Education (the going rumor is that Wendy Kopp is being considered for a top spot beneath Arne Duncan), it’ll be particularly interesting to see what Darling-Hammond has to say tonight. So interesting, in fact, that there are absolutely no available tickets for the talk. This may be a first for an education event on a weekday night.

The other panelists are Tom Payzant of Harvard and formerly the Boston public schools; Louis Delgado, a New York City principal, and Alec Gershberg, a professor at the New School.

Please send me questions you’d like me to ask via e-mail, because I need to leave now.