AFT argues for curricular coherence
The summer 2002 issue of American Educator, the A.F.T.'s flagship publication, now edited by Ruth Wattenberg, continues this quarterly's fine record of serious, thoughtful, constructive and nicely presented work.
The summer 2002 issue of American Educator, the A.F.T.'s flagship publication, now edited by Ruth Wattenberg, continues this quarterly's fine record of serious, thoughtful, constructive and nicely presented work.
It's not often that a study published in the journal Sociology of Education makes the front page of The Washington Post, but that's what happens when the study's findings suggest that sending junior to Andover may not have been such a good idea after all.
On the Newsweek website last week, Jonathan Alter tried to debunk the notion that the Supreme Court's ruling will turn the educational and political tides in favor of vouchers and Republicans who favor them. ("America still hates vouchers") Mickey Kaus quickly refuted Alter in his Kausfiles column on Slate.
According to school choice critic Richard Kahlenberg, private school vouchers will never work because successes with small pilot-level voucher programs (which help some students at the expense of others) cannot be replicated when taken to scale.
Sean Reardon and John Yun, The Civil Rights Project, Harvard UniversityJune 2002
William G. Howell and Paul Peterson2002
Paul Kengor, Wisconsin Policy Research Institute ReportJune 2002
Christopher Jepsen and Steven Rivkin, Public Policy Institute of California2002
Council of the Great City SchoolsJune 2002
In a forceful editorial the day after the Zelman decision, The Washington Post hailed the ruling, restated the need for experimentation, and urged choice opponents not to become fixated on blurring of church-state lines. "We don't belittle the dangers. But the dangers of vouchers are hypothetical ones at this stage.
While the newspapers have abounded with reports of state and school-district concerns about the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the Department of Education last week announced the launch of a demonstration project aimed at helping states put the principles of NCLB into action.
The Supreme Court's voucher decision last Thursday produced cheers from many quarters, some of them expected (Institute for Justice, Senator Voinovich), others less so (President Bush, New Republic legal specialist Jeffrey Rosen).
A New York state appeals court last week reversed a lower court ruling that the state was not meeting its obligation to provide students in New York City with a sound, basic education.
When the Department of Education recently reported to Congress on the state of teacher quality and teacher training in America, Secretary Paige concluded that teacher licensure today depends too heavily on training in pedagogy, and recommended that pathways into teaching be created for individuals who lack coursework in education (
Monica Martinez and Judy Bray, National Alliance on the American High SchoolMay 2002
National Center for Education Statistics2002
National Council on Teacher QualityMay 31, 2002
Annenberg Foundation and Annenberg Institute for School Reform2002
edited by Frederick Mosteller and Robert Boruch2002
Gerald Anderson and Patricia Davenport2002
The College Board yesterday approved a bunch of changes to the SAT that were spurred by a threat that the University of California system would drop the SAT as an admissions requirement. Last year, UC President Richard Atkinson criticized the SAT for not reflecting high school curricula and offering an advantage to students who can afford expensive test prep courses.
The Supreme Court's Zelman ruling is plainly good for poor children in Cleveland. It also proves beyond dispute that policymakers can, if they want to, craft a school-voucher program that will pass (federal) constitutional muster. Somewhere in America, there are bound to be a few legislators who had been wavering on the voucher issue who will now lend it their support.
After selling Netscape for $700 million, former president and CEO Jim Barksdale and his wife Sally pledged $100 million to help children in Mississippi learn to read.
Last weekend, two dozen accomplished men and women-mid-career professionals from outside the education establishment-spent a weekend in boot camp training to become superintendents of urban school districts in a program aimed at funneling highly talented people into those key roles.
Many in the academic world don't like private schools because they believe that society has a duty to develop citizens who are fully autonomous, and they embrace the idea of our nation's public schools preparing students to reflect critically on the traditions they are taught by their parents.
After decades of often animated conjecture and debate, the Supreme Court concluded in Zelman that Cleveland's publicly-funded voucher program is constitutional. The Court's long-awaited decision is good news for choice advocates in general and thousands of low-income Cleveland school children in particular.
William Lowe Boyd, Debra Hare and Joe Nathan, Center for School Change, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs, University of MinnesotaMay 2002
National Center for Education StatisticsJune 2002
Bryan C. Hassel, Progressive Policy InstituteMay 29, 2002
Releasing a new report on teacher quality, Education Secretary Rod Paige last week called upon states to radically transform their teacher certification systems by raising standards while lowering the barriers that deter many qualified candidates from entering the public-school classroom. States and universities need to focus on bringing "smart teachers with solid content knowledge" into U.S.