The 2008 Brown Center Report on American Education: How Well are American Students Learning?
Tom LovelessThe Brookings InstitutionFebruary 2009
Tom LovelessThe Brookings InstitutionFebruary 2009
Katherine K. Merseth et al.Harvard Education PressJanuary 2009
Chapter 5, "Bureaucracy Can't Teach"Philip HowardW.W. Norton & Co.January 2009
Geoffrey Goodman et al.Alliance for School Choice and Advocates for School ChoiceFebruary 2009
What has pork, cash cows, and ritual sacrifice? Why, the Omnibus Spending Bill of 2009, finally speeding through Congress. Yes, that's right, the plain ole budget for fiscal year 2009, which began, by the way, back on October 1, 2008.
President Obama's address to Congress is earning plaudits for its honesty, candor, and can-do/will-do/must-do spirit.
Districts and states across the land are all making changes to save some change. A few are even eyeing the long-sacred cow of small class sizes.
If you lead a charter school that's about to be closed for poor performance, how do you fight back? Well, you might misrepresent successful schools on the editorial page of your local newspaper. Sounds bizarre that but that's the tactic employed by Michael Mayo, executive director of Uphams Corner Charter in Massachusetts, whose charter has been revoked by the state.
In 2006, Fordham published a report with the playful name To Dream the Impossible Dream, which outlined several plausible paths to national academic standards. That dream seems less impossible today.
Once upon a time, little Susie was sent to the office for the errant spitball or wayward paper airplane landing in Ms. Beasley's coiffed beehive. Fast forward to 2009 and Susie--or in this case, a 14-year-old troublemaker from Wauwatosa, Wisconsin--has instead landed herself in the pen for a misuse-of-technology infraction. Her offense?
As reported by The Hoff at Education Week's NCLB Act II blog, earlier this week the nation's governors unanimously agreed to work toward common (i.e., national) standards. Were it not for our imploding economy this surely would have been front-page news.
Nancy Pelosi's troops are on quite a tear. First they went after Reading First, a program that by most accounts is doing wonders helping disadvantaged children gain basic literacy skills.
Ohio Governor Ted Strickland surprised most observers (including us) when he left the state's education voucher program intact in his biennial budget proposal. The Educational Choice Scholarship is available to up to 14,000 students assigned to chronically underperforming public schools.