Back to school to see Dewey's legacy
Roger Shattuck, a distinguished literary and cultural critic from Boston University, has a fascinating story in the New York Review of Books about serving on a local school board in Vermont.
Roger Shattuck, a distinguished literary and cultural critic from Boston University, has a fascinating story in the New York Review of Books about serving on a local school board in Vermont.
Kevin Donnelly, Menzies Research Centre2004
National Center for Education StatisticsMarch 2005
George K. Cunningham and J. E. Stone, JAM PressMarch 2005
Over the past half-century, the number of pupils in U.S. schools grew by about 50 percent while the number of teachers nearly tripled. Spending per student rose threefold, too. If the teaching force had simply kept pace with enrollments, school budgets had risen as they did, and nothing else changed, today's average teacher would earn nearly $100,000, plus generous benefits.
The Department of Health and Human Services is under fire for not doing enough to ferret out financial mismanagement, fraud, and abuse in Head Start programs.
If only every school had this problem. School officials at the affluent New Trier High School in northern Chicago, a high-performing public school that sends 95 percent of its graduates to four-year colleges, are discussing plans that they hope will decrease student intensity.
It's a no-rules steel cage match to the death in California, pitting the California Teachers Association against Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Union members are expected to approve a proposal to increase member dues by $180 over three years, a levy that will add a staggering $54 million to the $11 million war chest the union has assembled to fight the Governor's education proposals.
A Bronx teacher at notoriously bad Middle School 142 was charged this week with coercion, falsifying business records and other crimes following the discovery that he paid a former homeless man two dollars to take his state certification exam. The teacher, Wayne Brightly, was "tired of flunking" and was scared of losing his $59,000 salary if he failed again.
Recent discussions about inadequate high schools have focused on improving math and English. But topics like geography remain in desperate need of attention as well. Several years ago, a poll reported that only 13 percent of Americans ages 18-24 could find Iraq on a map, and scores on the 2001 geography NAEP were dismayingly low for high school students.