Apples to Apples: An Evaluation of Charter Schools Serving General Student Populations
Jay P. Greene, Greg Forster, and Marcus A. Winters, Manhattan InstituteJuly 2003
Jay P. Greene, Greg Forster, and Marcus A. Winters, Manhattan InstituteJuly 2003
Krista KaferThe Heritage FoundationMay 2003
National Center for Education StatisticsJuly 2003
Educational Testing ServiceMay 2003
As reported in Gadfly several weeks ago, Teach for America has feared for some time that it would be wounded by the drastic funding cuts for the national service program AmeriCorps.
By an overwhelming margin, the U.S. House of Representatives has raised the stakes on teacher preparation. The Ready to Teach Act, passed last week by a 404-17 vote, would make the passage rate of graduates of teacher training colleges a factor in awarding federal dollars to those institutions.
In a decision the Las Vegas Review-Journal called "stunning," Nevada's highest court overturned a referendum twice passed by state voters that requires a supermajority of legislators to approve new tax increases. The basis: a desire to increase school funding.
Gadfly is generally unsympathetic to unexcused absences. But this time we'll make an exception. Last week, the House Government Reform committee passed a bill authorizing education vouchers in the nation's capital on a close-to-party-line vote of 22-21. Only the absence of opponent Representative Major Owens (D-N.Y.) saved the bill from being stalled in committee by a tie, which D.C.
This is the second of the annual teacher quality reports that the Secretary of Education is required by No Child Left Behind to submit to Congress. Like last year's, the news in this report is mixed. Thirty-five states have linked their teacher certification requirements to student content standards; six are in the process of doing so.
"We expect," wrote Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, on behalf of a 5-4 Supreme Court majority okaying race-based affirmative action in the recent Michigan cases, "that 25 years from now the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today." [For Gadfly's coverage, see h