Good Ideas: Six Valuable State and Local Education Reforms
Robert Holland and Don Soifer, Lexington Institute April 2004
Robert Holland and Don Soifer, Lexington Institute April 2004
Center on Education PolicyMay 2004
Anyone who's ever lived through a tornado knows the provenance of the phrase "calm before the storm." There's that eerie, pregnant moment before the wind picks up, when the sky turns pea-green, the wind dies down, and everything seems muffled, almost pleasant. Then all hell breaks loose.
In recent weeks, David Steiner, a professor at Boston University, has roiled the ed school world with his article, "Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers: An Analysis of Syllabi from a Sample of America's Sc
According to the Independent, surveys consistently show that more than 50 percent of British families would like to send their kids to private schools, which cost on average ??7,000 per year, but fewer than 7 percent can actually afford to do so. Does a quality education have to be so expensive?
Back in January, Todd Oppenheimer published a devastating article on eRate, the federal tax on phone service that funds wiring schools for and to the Internet.
Every teacher has a story about a smart kid who failed because she just refused to do even the bare minimum to pass. Well-intentioned teachers also learn the hard way that lowering expectations and letting shoddy work slide by only makes things worse. The moral is apparently lost, though, on some school districts.
Sanjiv Jaggia and Vidisha Vachharajani, with the assistance of Joseph McCarthyBeacon Hill Institute at Suffolk UniversityMay 2004
Jay P. Greene and Marcus A. Winters, Manhattan InstituteMay 2004
Cynthia G. Brown, Citizens??? Commission on Civil RightsMay 2004
Three bills before the California legislature would reform that state's infamous textbook adoption process. Assembly Bill 2455 aims to curb the ever-escalating cost of textbooks.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has an important article on pushback from the education research community concerning the use of randomized studies of education interventions.
Gadfly caused a stir in Nebraska when it criticized the state for "doing just enough to keep its federal funds while skirting the spirit of the accountability provisions" of NCLB - and the U.S. Department of Education for playing along.
Uncle Sam isn't the only one who wants to see evidence that schools are adequately educating their students. In Boston, a group of 8th graders caused a stir by creating a guide to the city's high schools based on their average test scores, dropout rates, and attendance records.
New data available this week from Standard & Poor's shows that charter schools sponsored by Central Michigan University have made strong academic gains over the past three years. CMU is the largest university charter sponsor in the country, overseeing a quarter of Michigan's 202 charter schools.
San Diego City Council member Rocky Chavez is in hot water for the unusual pitch he makes to students considering enrolling in his charter School of Business and Technology.
Virginia, a mostly conservative state, would seem a natural environment for school choice and, in fact, polls show that many Virginians support choice as a means of injecting competition into the education system. Yet the Old Dominion has been inhospitable territory for this reform strategy, boasting one of the weakest charter laws on the books.
Public Agenda, with support from Common GoodMay 2004
After Brown v. Board of Education and subsequent Supreme Court decisions ended de jure segregation, critics noted a disturbing pattern of "white flight" from urban public schools. According to Samuel G.
Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager opined last week that Wisconsin can exempt itself from No Child Left Behind on the grounds that the law is not fully funded and encroaches on state control of education.
As all know, Monday was the golden anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, and in honor of that epochal decision we have seen literally scores of articles celebrating and appraising it and its legacy.
Kevin Chavous, Capital Books 2004
Anthony Carnevale and Donna Desrochers, Educational Testing ServiceMay 2004
Christine Campbell, Michael DeArmond, and Abigail Schumwinger, Center for Reinventing Public EducationApril 2004
South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford is pushing a bill to create a statewide charter district that could authorize charter schools anywhere in the state, which would then fund these schools directly, bypassing local districts entirely.
In the flood of dismaying statistics about American education, every once in while one bubbles to the surface that is so shocking it can scarcely be believed - even if you know it's true. Thus we learn that, among 8th grade New York City special ed students, the pass rates on state tests are 5 percent in math and 3.5 percent in reading.
Jon Schroeder, Progressive Policy InstituteMay 2004