Meeting the Highly Qualified Teacher Challenge: The Secretary's Third Annual Report on Teacher Quality
U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education2004
U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education2004
Jay P. Greene, School Choice WisconsinSeptember 28, 2004
E.D. Tabs, National Center for Education StatisticsAugust 2004
Everyone "knows" that we have a looming crisis in education staffing, as millions of Baby Boomers retire from teaching and school leadership posts and too few qualified people step forward to replace them.
The headline could be straight from The Onion: "Janey finds widespread failure in D.C. schools." No kidding! If such perspicacity is all it takes, Gadfly should have put in for the superintendent's job himself. But we do like the noise that new D.C.
If you don't know High Tech High in San Diego, you should. It's one of those schools that pulses, from hard-charging principal Larry Rosenstock, through the excellent teaching staff to the many at-risk kids who are succeeding at this charter school. Rosenstock's philosophy is simple: treat kids like adults and they'll act like adults.
Hurrah for England's chief inspector of schools, David Bell, and his plain-spoken criticism of goofball progressivism in education. In a recent lecture at the Hermitage School in England, Bell argued that students need the return to a well-rounded curriculum that includes a focus on basic skills.
Lou Gerstner, former IBM chair and founder of the "Teaching Commission", penned a trenchant op-ed in yesterday's Wall Street Journal that says American companies are outsourcing jobs not just because they can find cheaper labor overseas, but also because workers abroad, particularly in Asia, have stronger skills.
National Review's annual education issue contains much good stuff, including Rick Hess on school funding and Clint Bolick on the fitful progress of school choice. We especially recommend Richard Arum on the collapse of school discipline and the effect that's had on the academic environment, especially in urban school districts.
Opponents of Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson - a brave soul who dared support a statewide graduation test, charter schools, and the suspension of ever-popular class size and teacher pay initiatives - are pulling out all stops in their attempt to unseat her in November.
In this month's Atlantic, Jonathan Rauch poses the question: "Suppose I told you that I knew of an education reform guaranteed to raise the achievement levels of American students; that this reform would cost next to nothing and would require no political body's approval; and that it could be implemented overnight by anybody of a mind of undertake it.