Dewey Does Tokyo
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Japan is overhauling its elementary-secondary education system.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Japan is overhauling its elementary-secondary education system.
In the past several days, you may well have read assertions by U.S. Senators, explaining their vote against the Gregg amendment to include a voucher pilot program in the big elementary/secondary education bill, to the effect that there is no evidence that such programs work.
California gave its new high school exit exam for the first time this year and newspapers across the state last week made much of the "abysmal" results: less than 45 percent of the state's 9th graders passed the test. While a committee of teachers had recommended that the state set the passing score at 70 percent, the state board of education voted to lower the bar to 60 in Englis
Inspired by the negative character of most commentary on high-stakes testing in the press and the education literature, University of North Carolina psychometrician Greg Cizek has compiled a list of 10 good things that have been brought about by increased reliance on testing in our nation's schools.
This 105-page study, prepared by Robert J. Marzano of the McRel (Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning) regional lab under contract to the U.S. Department of Education, is an important, albeit rather technical, synthesis of 40 years of research on the characteristics of effective schools and effective teaching.
In Washington, DC, where the high school graduation rate is only 57 percent, what happens to the other 43 percent? Many later try to earn their diplomas by passing the GED, but only 34 percent of those taking the GED exam in DC pass it (compared to 70 percent nationwide). In this week's Washington City Paper, Garance Franke-Ruta puts a human face on these glum statistics i
As the big education bill limps through Congress, much debate centers on how to determine whether states are making real achievement gains, how to track those gains (or losses), and how best to compare states with each other - and with the country.
The Los Angeles Times last month published a parent's sordid tale of gaming the magnet school system in LA Unified School District to help get her child into her school of choice. In the article, Gale Holland described how a system designed to help minority kids escape from overcrowded, substandard schools has morphed into a form of education poker. Students are admitted to
Here's another worthy product of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, setting forth the issues that the Badger State would have to grapple with if it wanted to institute some form of performance- or merit-based compensation system for its public school teachers. This analysis focuses specifically on school-wide performance pay systems, i.e.
I'd immediately drop my membership in Phi Delta Kappa, an educators' honor society of sorts, except then I'd lose my subscription to its eponymous monthly magazine, and that would mean losing touch with the conventional wisdom that I sometimes need to orient myself. With rare exceptions, you can count on this for education geo-positioning: you want to be pointed approximately 180??
In a commentary published by the Hoover Institution which appeared in assorted magazines this week, Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby explains how she overcame her skepticism about standardized testing when she realized how cost-effective it is as a tool to foster desirable education change.
The Colorado Commission on Higher Education (CCHE) wanted to determine whether the state's ed schools were tailoring their teacher training programs to the state's academic standards for students as well as to new performance standards (set by the state Board of Education) for schools of education. The CCHE asked the National Association of Scholars (NAS) to examine four teacher ed programs.
The charter schools of the Lone Star State have been much in the news of late, particularly as the legislature grappled with a possible moratorium on their creation. That didn't happen, but people are understandably interested in how they're doing. After all, by 1999-2000, there were 142 such schools enrolling nearly 25,000 youngsters. How are they doing?
Our own Diane Ravitch has edited the third in her series of these thick but valuable volumes, this one based on a May 2000 Brookings conference devoted to academic standards in the U.S. Weighing in at 414 pages, this is indispensable for any serious follower of (or participant in) standards-based education reform.
Education Week's annual assessment of technology and education holds few surprises, but it does highlight an interesting shift in the terms of the education technology debate, from an emphasis on how many computers can be found in each classroom to how well (and for what) they are being used.
The indefatigable John Marks has been one of the closest and most critical observers of British education. This report from the London-based Centre for Policy Studies is an informed critique of British education standards and performance. It includes an interesting comparison between the "selective" system of Northern Ireland and the "comprehensive" system of England.
Authored by Stanford education professor Michael W. Kirst, this 24-page report is the latest in the "Perspectives in Public Policy: Connecting High Education and the Public School" series, published by The Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL) and The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
Co-authors Jeffrey Henig, Thomas Holyoke, Natalie Lacireno-Paquet and Michele Moser of the Center for Washington Area Studies at George Washington University present a comprehensive status report on the D.C. charter scene in this crisp and readable evaluation.
A new analysis of state testing data by the Council of the Great City Schools finds that many of the nation's urban schools are posting significant gains in math and reading and reducing achievement gaps between white and minority students.
If you share our concern about whether the forthcoming E.S.E.A. amendments can successfully be implemented, this report tells a cautionary tale.
Richard J. Coley of the Educational Testing Service, the author of this 51-page report, concludes that, with a few exceptions, gender differences on most academic outcomes do not vary much across racial or ethnic groups.
This flagship monthly publication of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) is intermittently interesting, though its basic orientation is progressivist and constructivist. The May 2001 issue is better than most, particularly for those interested in teachers.
The Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL) sometimes does good work. And then sometimes it makes you want to throw up. This particular task force report makes one good point: states are in the education policy driver's seat. Then it argues that state policy makers aren't very good at driving.
Mike Antonucci's Education Intelligence Agency is not only the nation's invaluable source of otherwise inaccessible information about teacher unions; it is also, increasingly, a useful producer of interesting education data.
In case you thought mauling President Bush's ESEA plan was the only education business facing the 107th Congress, think again. A big sign belongs over the Beltway saying "Caution: Special Ed Ahead." By October 2002, Senate and House are supposed to reauthorize the expiring portions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which drives most special education policy in the U.S.
The Dallas Morning News ran a series on dropouts last week which included 19 stories under five headings: how big is the dropout problem?; why do kids drop out?; the Latino dropout problem; one problem, many solutions; and finding the will to solve it. The series is Written Off: Texas' Dropout Problem.
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