Kill the Messenger: The War on Standardized Testing
Terry RyanRichard P. Phelps, with a foreword by Herbert J. Walberg and a preface by J.E. Stone, Transaction Publishers2003
NCLB and Middle School: Confronting the Challenges
David L. House IIAlliance for Excellent EducationJuly 2003
Charter Schools and Race: A Lost Opportunity for Integrated Education
Kathleen Porter-MageeErika Frankenberg and Chungmei Lee, The Civil Rights Project, Harvard UniversityJuly 2003
The Unintended Consequences of High-Stakes Testing
Chester E. Finn, Jr.Gail Jones, Brett Jones, and Tracy Hargrove, Rowman and Littlefield2003
Young to head CA charter org
Former Los Angeles school board president Caprice Young, who warmed the hearts of education reformers during her four years in office and accomplished more than anyone expected with that sprawling, balky school system, has agreed to head a newly formed organization that will support the 400+ charter schools in California and help others get started.
Poor increase education spending in India
James Tooley has spent years documenting how private education can work wonders for low-income students in international settings.
Choice expands in FL
Florida's Opportunity Scholarship program, which lets students in persistently failing schools use a publicly funded voucher at the school of their choice, is doubling in size as more and more families in the (so far) nine failing Florida schools become aware of their options.
Dem defection on D.C. vouchers
Gadfly tries not to read the political tea leaves, preferring a just-the-facts approach. But when the senior Senator from California, Democratic impresario, and teachers' union darling Dianne Feinstein comes out in favor of private school vouchers, something important is going on. Feinstein has emerged as a potential swing vote in the Senate, where foes of the D.C.
Fighting music and arts cuts
Across the country, art and music programs in schools are being squeezed by contracting budgets and the demands of No Child Left Behind, which places the curricular focus on reading and math. Devotees of these programs are fighting back with letter-writing campaigns and a website, http://www.supportmusic.com/index-home.html.
Kudos for assessment courage
Chester E. Finn, Jr.With encouragement from the Council of Great City Schools and various dispensations and special funding from the powers that be at NAEP, a handful of America's big-city school systems are doing something gutsy and important: administering the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests to representative samples of their 4th and 8th graders and allowing the results to be reported just as i
Listening to teachers
Steve FarkasThose who would change the teaching profession by instituting pay incentives tied to performance can learn some things about teacher attitudes toward the issue from the latest Public Agenda study, Stand By Me. Here, I'd like to focus on what teachers told us was a glaring flaw in the public schools and what they would support to solve it.
Art of the possible
We don't always agree with every single thing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has to say about education but they're growing wiser with age, particularly when it comes to charter (and private) schools.