From Blueprint to Reality: San Diego's Education Reforms
Julian R. Betts, Andrew C. Zau, and Kevin KingPublic Policy Institute of California2005
Julian R. Betts, Andrew C. Zau, and Kevin KingPublic Policy Institute of California2005
Editor's Note: This commentary first appeared in the New York Times on November 7, 2005.
Amidst the clean-up efforts in Louisiana, Governor Kathleen Blanco has proposed a plan to allow New Orleans' failing schools (an astonishing 102 of the city's 117 schools) to re-open as charters, free from the miserable New Orleans school board's overbearing regulations.
State capitals have been abuzz with talk of teacher merit pay. Unfortunately, that talk has rarely translated into action (see here) - until now.
There was no hero to rush to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's aid Tuesday as California voters pummeled all four of his ballot propositions with "nos." Two of these rebukes were particularly painful for education reformers. Proposition 74 would have lengthened from two to five years the time required for a public school teacher to earn tenure.
For 40 years the United States has struggled to find the right approach to academic standards for K-12 education. Oversimplifying, this quest was catalyzed by the Coleman Report (1966) and A Nation at Risk (1983). The former said we can't rely on fiddling with school inputs to boost school outcomes, while the latter said our outcomes are sorely inadequate.
After months of heated debate, the Kansas State Board of Education officially thumbed its nose at the scientific community. Under the state's newly adopted science standards, Kansas schoolchildren will now be taught (we're not making this up) that not all scientific occurrences have "natural" explanations.