Grading Vouchers: Ranking America's School Choice Programs
Robert C. Enlow, Milton & Rose Friedman FoundationMarch 2004
Robert C. Enlow, Milton & Rose Friedman FoundationMarch 2004
Lewis C. Solmon, Human Resources Policy Corporation, and Pete Goldschmidt, Center for the Study of Evaluation, UCLAMarch 2004
This week, headlines lit up with the news that "one school [in Milwaukee, Wisconsin] that received millions of dollars through the nation's oldest and largest voucher program, was founded by a convicted rapist" and that "another school reportedly entertained kids with Monopoly while cashing $330,000 in tuition checks for hundreds of no-show students." Voucher critics were quick to charge that "
The Bush administration has recently come under fire for insufficient education spending.
Lately, it seems that just about everyone has a bone to pick with No Child Left Behind. Critics on right and left complain that the law's provisions are causing too many headaches, and schools, districts, and legislators are vowing to reject federal funding so as to avoid some of its tricky accountability provisions.
More high praise for the Defense Department's school system, where last year black and Hispanic 8th graders outperformed their peers in every single state. To be sure, the DoD system has built-in advantages, such as a unified command structure and ability to enforce parental involvement that other schools can't match.
The latest issue of American Educator has a fantastic series of stories urging high school teachers and counselors to level with students about a basic truth: if you don't do well in high school, you won't do well in college or in the labor market.
Juvenal said, "Two things only the people anxiously desire, bread and circuses." Even that famously cynical Roman poet might have been taken aback by some quarters of American K-12 education.
It's apparent by now that Congress is not going to follow most of the excellent recommendations of the Bush administration's commission on the reform of IDEA, least of all its suggestion that federal funds be able to be used by states for special-ed vouchers a la Florida's "McKay Scholarships." (See
Mark Harrison, Education Forum2004
Michael Casserly, Council of the Great City SchoolsMarch 2004
Consortium on Chicago School ResearchFebruary 2004
Just about everyone - principals, parents, students, the general public - knows that many U.S. schools have a discipline problem, that kids are often out of control, not to mention rude, inattentive, and sometimes violent. Nearly every survey of problems facing U.S. schools puts discipline near the top of the list.
Homeschooling - once considered the education option of choice for gun-toting religious fanatics or a haven for social misfits - is coming of age as home-schooled students begin to find themselves welcomed at prestigious colleges and universities. It's hardly surprising that many homeschooled students, who get personalized attention in a nurturing educational environment, are doing well.
Two months ago, Georgia's Professional Standards Commission (PSC) - the committee that is responsible for "certification, preparation, and conduct of certified, licensed, or permitted personnel employed in the public schools of the State of Georgia" - quietly launched an investigation into "diploma mill" teachers.
In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg took control of the board of education, with decidedly mixed results so far (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=140#1730).
Evidence that D.C. Public Schools are in crisis is not hard to come by.
In any reform of anything, the devil is always in the details. And the Old Deceiver lurks still in the fine print of the pay-for-performance plan approved last week by Denver teachers. How realistic is a plan that won't fully take effect for another eight years? How will the inevitable tension between teachers on the old tenure-based system and teachers on the new plan be resolved?
It's March Madness time, and not even Gadfly is immune to the pleasures of a couple of weeks of serious college basketball.
The push is on to open up the job of authorizing charter schools to more entities. (See Fordham's report on charter school authorizing, which advocated just such a move, at http://www.edexcellence.net/detail/news.cfm?news_id=67). So far, however, success is rare.
Kyle Stevens, Trafford Publishing2004
Larry Cuban, Teachers College PressJanuary 2003
Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning and the Education Commission of the StatesFebruary 2004
Council for Basic Education March 2004
Education Secretary Rod Paige announced this week that the Department of Education will relax NCLB's "highly qualified teacher" requirements.
"It was a political hit that would make Tony Soprano blush." Just hours before the New York City Panel for Education Policy - successor to the Big Apple's school board - was to vote on Mayor Bloomberg's controversial plan to hold back third graders who failed the city's math and reading tests, the mayor axed two of his own hand-picked board members and orchestrated the firing of a third, all of
In this space, Michael Kirst recently provided a useful commentary comparing the time it took to implement the original Title I to the present controversies over implementing the No Child Left Behind act.
U.S. News & World Report has a fantastic special issue on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. One of the articles therein, "Unequal Education," is as fine a lay-of-the-land piece on education we've seen in many a year.