Charter Schools Today: Changing the Face of American Education
The Center for Education ReformNovember 2003
The Center for Education ReformNovember 2003
Todd Oppenheimer2003
If there is a master plan behind the school reform agenda of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his chancellor, Joel Klein, we have yet to divine it. On some issues, their instincts are good - charter schools, for example (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=121#1520).
Andrew Coulson, Mackinac Center for Public PolicyMay 2003
This week, Time has a chilling report on the increase in violent incidents among very young students. In Philadelphia, for example, schools chief Paul Vallas had to institute a get-tough policy after 21 serious assaults on teachers and fellow students by kindergartners last year, including one boy who punched a pregnant teacher in the stomach.
Discipline - or, if you prefer the euphemism, classroom management
Andrew Wolf reports in the New York Sun that the New York City department of education has "overspent its budget for professional service contracts by more than $200 million" over the past year, in pursuit of the elusive and unproven "professional development." According to Wolf, the Big Apple's schools are essentially trying to make up for the failings of their chosen "progressive" ma
This week, Education Secretary Rod Paige announced new guidance on one of the stickiest questions surrounding the AYP requirements of NCLB: just how to deal with severely disabled pupils in calculating who is and isn't making adequate yearly progress.
This week, the pilot District of Columbia voucher program cleared another important barrier when it passed the House as part of a huge consolidated spending bill. Included are $13 million for the voucher program itself, $1 million for administrative expenses, and an additional $13 million for both D.C. public and charter schools. Children in D.C.
American society is groaning under a tide of litigiousness, and education is one of the fields most profoundly affected by it.
The tragedy of urban education is the dearth of effective schools for poor kids. That acute shortage belies the right nominally conferred by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, namely that parents can move their children from failing public schools to better ones.