Commentary
Twenty-Five Years of Educating Children with Disabilities: The Good News and the Work Ahead
American Youth Policy Forum and the Center on Education Policy2002
Commentary
Milwaukee's Public Schools: The Untold Story of America's Newest Democratic Revolution
John Gardner, American Education Reform CouncilJanuary 2002
Commentary
Class Size Reduction in California
Brian Stecher and George Bohrnstedt, CSR Research ConsortiumFebruary 4, 2002
Commentary
Title I Funding: Poor Children Benefit Though Funding Per Poor Child Differs
General Accounting OfficeJanuary 31, 2002
Commentary
President Bush makes friends and enemies with his education budget
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.
Commentary
Surge in career-changers entering teaching
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.
Commentary
Good news: Teachers College prexy endorses canon
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.
Commentary
Education in Singapore: Part II
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.
Commentary
Jerry Brown's military charter school moves to double time
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.
Commentary
Kudos to New York Times reporter
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.
Commentary
Undoing bilingual education reform in California
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.