Big News: Public employee unions don't like outsourcing
And in other shockers, environmentalists don't like NASCAR and feminists don't like Vegas.
And in other shockers, environmentalists don't like NASCAR and feminists don't like Vegas.
In Sunday's Washington Post, Fordham Institute president Chester E. Finn debunks five of the most common (and harmful) myths pervading debates over No Child Left Behind. Good stuff, and I'm not just saying that because he's my boss.
Increasing numbers of U.S. Muslims are opting for home schooling. It's a bad idea for one simple reason: They are segregating themselves from mainstream American society.
Sari Levy, Van Schoales, and Tony LewisPiton and Donnell-Kay FoundationsMarch 2008
As members of the Massachusetts State Board of Education rack their collective brain by searching for kinder words than "underperforming" with which to label sorry schools, the board's only student member, Zachary Tsetsos, seemed to be also the only one with any common sense. "Why are we spending time on this?" he asked.
The Hillsborough County school district (Tampa) has adopted a secular academic calendar, according to which religious holidays are not free days: the school must go on. For Good Friday, however, the district announced that it would excuse all absences--whether for religious reasons or not. To complicate matters further, some parents received the news via telephone message while others did not.
The evolution debate in Florida grows tiresome, and not only because Ben Stein--he of somnolent monotone--is now involved, but because it keeps reiterating the same, tired points albeit in different ways.
Good leaders know that the buck stops with them; others need to be reminded. So reasons the Mississippi Board of Education, which pushed through the state's House of Representatives a bill to remove underperforming superintendents from their jobs, even if they were elected by the public.
Classes will be affected by class resentments if British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, have their way. While both men offer beaucoup platitudes about increasing the skills of Britain's workforce and its global economic competitiveness, their government is, contemporaneously, attempting to dull the few sparkling parts of the U.K.'s educational system.
Ever since the release of his biography of Al Shanker, Tough Liberal, Richard Kahlenberg has been busy penning articles about the education issue du jour, asking always: What would Shanker do?
Every few months, it seems, someone calls for a moratorium on new charter schools in the Buckeye State until the current ones can be further "studied." Yet the one statutory requirement for an examination of Ohio's charter and choice programs has lingered without action for more than a year and its deadline is looming.
In 2005, state governors and educational leaders agreed the country needs to boost achievement levels to prepare students for college and demanding 21st century jobs. That's a good idea and lots of educational leaders and politicians have mouthed similar words since Achieve Inc.
Many Ohio school districts have surpassed their state-allotted five "calamity days" this year. Consequently, charter schools have learned district calamity days are even more calamitous because they are at the mercy of local school districts for busing.
It would cost up to $200 million to provide college scholarships to graduates of the Cincinnati; Covington, Kentucky; and Newport, Kentucky, public-school systems, according to the Cincinnati-based Strive education partnership.
Governor Ted Strickland made it clear in his State of the State address, and more recently in comments in the press, that he wants control over what happens per K-12 education. What's been missing from this debate around the shake-up in the state's educational leadership, however, are details of the governor's plan for moving K-12 education forward.
Terry Ryan's Columbus Dispatch op-ed concerning Governor Strickland, Ohio school superintendent Susan Tave Zelman, and Fordham's Fund the Child report, sparked comment, including this e-mail from Kris Christenson:
Are you a writer/researcher/thinker/doer with a passion for improving education? Then check out this opportunity to join the Fordham team.
This Associated Press story reports that the kinder-and-gentler Massachusetts Board of Education is "searching for gentler euphemisms to describe the state's failing schools after educators complained current labels d
The New York Times's Samuel Freedman provides a great introduction to the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) program???basically a Teach For America for parochial schools. Never heard of it?
Venture capitalist-cum-school reformer Whitney Tilson comes in for a ribbing at the Education Notes Online blog, at the hands of Norm Scott, whom one New York friend of mine calls ???an anti-UFT lefty who is very smart.???
Over at the "ELL Advocates" blog, whole language apologist Stephen Krashen makes a lame attempt to poke holes in Sol Stern's recent Fordham r
Britain's largest teachers' union will vote, at its upcoming annual conference, to determine how many students the ideal class should enroll. What bosh!
This is what $60 million gets you. httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=Cfuy6tVpTfM (The original Ed in 08 video is here.)
Teachers in Nashua, New Hampshire, have threatened to strike unless they reach a contract settlement by March 31.
Ed in '08 mastermind Roy Romer--whose lively career has also included stints as the L.A. superintendent, Colorado governor, and Democratic National Committee chairman--let it slip today that he thinks the Democratic candidate who amasses the most pledged delegates should get the nomination.
For the same reason I'm opposed to sex-ed class in schools, I'm opposed to clubs like this. A parent sends his students to a public school to receive a rigorous education in the core curriculum.
Rumors are circulating that the Secretary is about to announce her resignation from the Department of Education.