Who's in Charge Here? The Tangled Web of School Governance and Policy
Noel Epstein, Editor, Brookings Institution Press and Education Commission of the States 2004
Noel Epstein, Editor, Brookings Institution Press and Education Commission of the States 2004
At the end of a 108th Congress plagued by partisan rancor and seemingly more devoted to symbolic than substantive progress on a host of issues, a lame duck session just before Thanksgiving managed to produce an unexpectedly promising bill to reauthorize the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which governs special education.
In Fremont, California, the local school board was determined to reroute elementary and middle school students from the posh Mission Hills neighborhood away from high-performing Mission Hills High School to lower-performing schools in the area. Mission Hills parents objected, and even weighed splitting off to form their own school district, though in the end they did not.
It was perhaps a foregone conclusion, but one cannot help but be struck by Tuesday's recommendations from a court-appointed panel of referees in the New York City school financing case: increased state aid eventually reaching $5.63 billion extra for Big Apple schools each year, plus an additional $9.17 billion for capital improvements.
The Education Department's new Institute for Education Sciences was set up to take policy guidance and expert advice from a fifteen member National Board for Education Sciences, nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate.
There are achievement gaps and then there are achievement gaps. A Japanese elementary school teacher with decades of experience was fired this month for repeatedly failing a writing exam designed for his students. According to an Osaka education official, the teacher had been placed in a training program to improve his teaching skills in March, but "failed to show any signs of improvement.
When the Advanced Placement (AP) program was established in 1955, it was designed to distinguish high-achieving high school students by giving them access to more rigorous, college-level coursework. Nearly a half-century later, enrollment in AP courses is expanding to include not just the highest-achieving students, but virtually anyone who wants in.