Educational Freedom in Urban America
David Salisbury and Casey Lartigue, editors, Cato InstituteMay 2004
David Salisbury and Casey Lartigue, editors, Cato InstituteMay 2004
Writing in the centrist Democrat magazine, Blueprint, Andrew Rotherham is characteristically perspicacious in warning that the left's opposition to NCLB may make its worst fears of "privatization" come true.
New York Times reporter Diane Jean Schemo wrote a fine profile of Denver's new teacher pay-for-performance scheme (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=141#1740).
The summer 2004 issue of Education Next is out and contains many items worthy of your attention. For example, Jay Greene and Marcus Winters's account of how Florida's A+ voucher program has spurred failing schools to improve. Voucher-eligible schools, they found, made gains 15.1 percentile points higher on the FCAT math test than the Florida average.
On Monday, Governor Bill Owens signed the nation's first-ever college voucher program. It will award a stipend usable at any state university to all Colorado undergraduates who qualify for in-state tuition, with a smaller stipend made available for low-income students attending three private universities. The state already spends about $700 million on higher education each year.
Last week was "education week" for John Kerry's campaign, during which he unveiled a series of proposals that likely comprise the main education plank of his platform.
Based on your critique of Nebraska's approved state accountability plan (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=144#1771), it's clear that you know nothing about our system of assessment and accountability. You know nothing about the data supporting its validity and reliability.
Education officials in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island announced last week that they were joining forces to create the New England Compact Assessment Program. In October 2005, all three states will begin using a common reading and math test in grades 3-8 and a common writing test in grades 5 and 8 to fulfill their NCLB accountability requirements.
Washington State's Academic Achievement and Accountability Commission voted unanimously this week to lower the passing score in reading and math for fourth- and seventh-graders, and recommended lowering the pass score for the tenth-grade reading test on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL), the statewide accountability test.
Richard J. Coley, Educational Testing ServiceNovember 2003
The Albert Shanker Institute and the New Economy Information ServiceApril 20, 2004
Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform is her usual blunt self in a recent exchange with the editors of USA Today, who bemoan financial, curricular, and administrative scandals among charter schools and call for greater accountability for them.
Martha McCall, Gage Kingsbury, and Allan Olson, Northwest Evaluation AssociationApril 2004
Bryan C. Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel, Armchair Press May 2004
Clifford Adelman, Institute of Educational Sciences, U.S. Department of Education April 2004
Katherine Mangu-Ward penned a super essay in the March 29 Weekly Standard (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Protected/Articles/000/000/003/881iitwp.asp) that accurately describes NCLB's virtues, acknowledges its shortcomings, responds thoughtfully to several oft-voiced criticisms, and s
Last week, the National Collegiate Athletics Association approved reforms intended to improve graduation rates among college athletes, amid an outcry over the horrendous rates at many schools, particularly in men's basketball and football (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=140#1725).
A pair of excellent articles in Education Week by Lynn Olson point to the UK for lessons on the pitfalls of standards-based reform on the one hand, and value-added analysis on the other.
Big news for Colorado charter schools. That state's legislature has just passed two bills packed with useful charter law reforms. One creates a Colorado State Charter Institute to sponsor charter schools, removing local districts from their monopoly over that key role.
A rosebud to our friends at the Progressive Policy Institute for the launch of "Eduwonk," a daily blog on education issues. It's peppered with smart and witty comments on the education news of the day, perfect for those who just can't wait the full seven days for the next Gadfly. Check it out at http://www.eduwonk.com.
Sobering thoughts from Frederick Hess on why the new D.C. voucher program won't have the hoped-for effect of reforming the public school system by exposing it to competition. In fact, the new program shields public schools from real competition by capping enrollment at 3 percent of the school-age population, while actually adding dollars to the woeful D.C.
Considering all the bad news and negative comments you sometimes hear about charter schools, you wonder why anyone would ever choose them for their child.
Robert Perkins, Brian Kleiner, Stephen Roey, and Janis Brown, Westat and National Center for Education StatisticsApril 2004
The Colorado legislature has passed, and Governor Bill Owens is expected to sign, a bill creating a voucher program for higher education in that state. The new program will give Colorado students $2,400 to spend on up to 140 credit hours at state colleges and universities. It will also loosen some of the arcane?and ruinous?funding regulations that Colorado colleges labor under.
Caroline M. Hoxby2003
Writing in The Nation, Stanford professor Claude Steele makes a number of points about the "ability paradigm," his term for the testing system that assesses the academic readiness and achievement of individual students, guides placement decisions (such as whether a student will go on to the next grade level or a competitive college), and guides political and social decisions as to how
In Minnesota, a state Senate committee voted yesterday along party lines to reject the nomination of Cheri Yecke to be state superintendent. Her apparent sin? Being too "controversial," which is code for getting useful things done.
As we know, K-12 education is beset by snake oil and flim-flam. Usually, we don't bother to comment, on grounds that life is too short, that it's best not to draw attention to nonsense, that it's bad for our digestions, etc.But sometimes, there crops up an example of meretriciousness so obnoxious we must take note. Thus it is with "High Test Scores?
The suggestion that the Pennsylvania Department of Education is "refusing" to release district-by-district data or public information is just not accurate ("Secrecy vs. sunshine"). The controversy began when the School District of Philadelphia asked the Department to produce an interim report.
The Sun-Times reports that Chicago students who used the school-choice provision of No Child Left Behind to transfer from weak to stronger schools showed gains in reading and math. Further, the transfers didn't harm either the schools they left or the schools they entered, according to a study performed by the Chicago Board of Education at the paper's request.