First thoughts about the NAEP
It won't do to be churlish about today's NAEP long-term trend results. But neither should we be gaga. Here are Gadfly's first reflections, with more to come in later editions.
It won't do to be churlish about today's NAEP long-term trend results. But neither should we be gaga. Here are Gadfly's first reflections, with more to come in later editions.
In today's Wall Street Journal, Education Secretary Rod Paige gives a blistering critique of the NAACP leadership, accusing Julian Bond and Kweisi Mfume of taking "a proud, effective organization in a totally new direction: naked partisan politics, pure and simple." Specifically, Paige accuses the NAACP leaders of attacking NCLB - whose go
We're not sure whether to cheer or jeer. As the Wall Street Journal's June Kronholz reports, the tutoring industry is setting its sights on the Barney set. Sylvan expects to enroll four-year-olds in each of its learning centers by winter; Kaplan's SCORE! centers already teach over 15,000 children from ages four to six. It's a growth industry, but is it a good idea?
According to the Washington Post, Mexico's largest teachers' union (also the largest union period in Latin America) has created "a monstrous system of perks and patronage" that has basically made it impossible for teachers to be fired, even if they rarely show up for work.
What does it take to kill a damaging and misleading falsehood? For years, respectable researchers and advocacy groups from left and right have been trying to quash and correct the misleading high-school graduation rate figure put out annually by the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS).
Education Trust-WestJune 2005
Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Kenneth M. Zeichner, eds., American Educational Research Association June 2005
Committee for Economic Development2005
Daniel J. McGrath, Emily W. Holt, and Marilyn M. Seastrom, National Center for Education StatisticsJune 2005
As always, the National Education Association convention, recently concluded in Los Angeles, was quite a circus.
Gadfly mourns the passing of Ray Budde, an education professor at the University of Massachusetts who defined the term "charter school" and helped to spark the movement that continues to this day.
That was the question examined by last week's Senate hearing on "The American History Achievement Act," a bill proposed by Senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.
Gadfly is certainly correct to be left cold by David Broder's (non)verdict on the differences between how teachers and the general public view education reform efforts. (See "Edu-commentary.") Broder's inconclusiveness is not, however, due to a paralyzingly subtle understanding of the issue.
Michael Podgursky, Lawrence Mishel, and Sean Corcoran, National Council on Teacher QualityJune 29, 2005
Center on Education Policy June 2005
Center on Educational Governance, University of Southern California2005
Daria Hall, Education TrustJune 2005
In the past several weeks, as the Ohio legislature crafted the Buckeye State's biennial budget, each line item had its own constituency. Some of the most contentious debates were those centered on the state's system of funding public education.
Last week, David Broder and George Will - high priests of the Washington fourth estate - published side-by-side columns on education in the Washington Post. Both say important and useful things without, finally, coming to any real conclusions or recommendations.
John Walton's tragic and untimely death earlier this week in a small-plane crash at the age of 58 deprives low-income American children of one of their best friends and most generous benefactors.
Teachers and staff at a Little Rock elementary school recently received bonuses totaling $134,800 after they improved student test scores by a whopping 17 percent in one year.
The Texas House, called back into session by school funding issues, has passed a bill (HB 2) that increases teacher pay, lowers school property taxes, and allows districts to purchase digital technology instead of traditional textbooks.
A recent article in Education Week notes that NEA members will be celebrating growth in the union's membership rolls at the union's annual shindig, opening later this week in Los Angeles. After last year's drop in "active teacher" membership figures - the first such drop in 28 years - the NEA looks to gain members this year on the strength of a new recruitment campaign.
Standard & Poor's, School Evaluation Services2005
Administration for Children and Families, Health and Human Services June 11, 2005
Katherine S. Neville, Rachel H. Sherman, and Carol E. Cohen, The Finance Project2005
Islamic schools are in the news this week. Time profiles an Islamic pre-K-12 school in suburban Chicago that has a mainstream curriculum and typical after-school activities, but also maintains traditional Islamic practices like dress codes, separation of the sexes, and regular prayer and Koran studies.
On Monday, the Department of Education released extensive new guidelines for states, districts, and providers of supplemental educational services, a complex, contentious and confused area of NCLB. States have complained that they were unclear on how best to implement the SES provisions of the law and needed more guidance.
In this month's Policy Review, Paul Hill chronicles one key element of Britain's two-decade old education reform strategy, one that does an imaginative job of blending private largesse, innovation and management expertise with public education.