School Dropouts: Education Could Play a Stronger Role in Identifying and Disseminating Promising Prevention Strategies
General Accounting OfficeFebruary 1, 2002
General Accounting OfficeFebruary 1, 2002
The big problem with the usual approaches to improving schools is that we fiddle with all kinds of things except the one thing that really matters, which is instructional practice, according to Harvard's Dick Elmore. Putting pressure on schools to improve won't work unless teachers know what to do at the level of practice, and Elmore says they don't.
For years, the advocates of standards-based reform have held up Advanced Placement tests and the International Baccalaureate as models: a clearly defined syllabus; a teacher who is prepared to teach that syllabus; a course based on the syllabus; an end-of-course examination.
The problem is now well established.
Just because the D.C. public schools are failing to provide special education services for many children doesn't mean the school district isn't spending pots of money on special ed. A pair of articles in this week's Washington Post shed unhappy light on where some of that money is going.
American Youth Policy Forum and the Center on Education Policy2002
John Gardner, American Education Reform CouncilJanuary 2002
Brian Stecher and George Bohrnstedt, CSR Research ConsortiumFebruary 4, 2002
General Accounting OfficeJanuary 31, 2002
The White House budget released last week contained good news for school choice supporters. It includes a tax credit that would pay up to $2,500 a year in private school tuition for parents of children whose public schools are failing.
A front-page story in The New York Times this week described a big increase in the number of people seeking jobs as teachers nationwide, prompted by the sinking economy and a wave of soul-searching after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Until now, most of us believed that ed school professors were in principle opposed to the concept of a "canon" of great books. It turns out that this is not so, at least not if we consider the recent statements of Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College, Columbia University.
In last week's Gadfly, I described a bit about modern Singapore and how its world-beating education system is structured. Today I offer ten observations based on what struck me most during a brief visit. First, ethnicity is indeed powerful, but a country's education culture and standards can trump ethnic differences.
The Oakland Military Institute, the charter school opened by Mayor Jerry Brown last August, is having a tough first year. The seventh-grade curriculum chosen by the school has turned out to be too difficult for the students; nearly one-third of them scored D averages and wound up on academic probation.
In a recent editorial in the Gadfly, I criticized New York Times reporter Diana Jean Schemo for her hostile coverage of reading instruction. In two articles, she managed to convey her misunderstanding of the phonics/whole language issue and to cite researchers with an axe to grind against any kind of phonetic instruction.
The California State Board of Education has proposed new regulations that would undo the reform of bilingual education enacted by the state in 1998 after voters passed Proposition 227. That ballot measure limited native language instruction in public schools to a single year, unless parents requested a waiver.
William H. Schmidt et al.2001
Yong Zhao and Paul Conway, Teachers College RecordJanuary 27, 2001
At the risk of falling into the trap of instant expertise, let me offer some impressions-brought home from a recent trip-about why Singapore keeps coming in at the top on international tests of student achievement, at least in science and math. This week, I sketch the basic structure of that small but vibrant country's education system.
Principals are under increasing pressure to raise student test scores. The vast majority of their teachers are committed and competent, principals say, but an unknown number stifle learning. Given the extreme difficulty of terminating a tenured teacher, what's a principal to do once she has tried without success to help the teacher improve? According to Dr.
After learning of a $5 million donation made by Florida Power to a private school scholarship program under the Sunshine State's new education tax credit law, the teachers union in Pinellas County, Florida has urged the local school board to shut off all power in county schools for a day as payback for the utility company.
Is installing a "whole school" reform model the best way to turn around a struggling school? Since 1997, Uncle Sam has given U.S. public schools over $480 million to put school-wide reform designs in place through the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Program (also known as Obey-Porter).
Seven provocative new papers examining key challenges of implementing the new federal education law-particularly its testing and accountability provisions-and strategies for meeting them will be available tomorrow on the Fordham Foundation website (www.edexcellence.net).
Pedro Reyes and Joy C. Phillips, University of Texas at AustinAugust 2001
James Catterall and Richard Chapleau, National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, Teachers College, Columbia UniversityDecember 2001
Jay P. Greene, Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan InstituteJanuary 2002
Neal McCluskey, Center for Education ReformJanuary 2002
Gary Miron and Christopher Nelson, National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, Teachers College, Columbia UniversityDecember 2001