Choosing Choice: School Choice in International Perspective
David N. Plank and Gary Sykes, editors, Teachers College PressApril 2003
David N. Plank and Gary Sykes, editors, Teachers College PressApril 2003
In January, Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty announced his plan to kill the five year old "Profile of Learning" standards, which focus on measuring "higher-order thinking" based on projects and reports instead of traditional pencil and paper tests, and replace them with new, more rigorous content-based academic standards.
The Hoover Institution's Eric Hanushek seeks a silver lining to California's budgetary clouds. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, he contends that this could be the time to free California from the costly "straitjacket" of class-size reduction and thereby free some resources for more effective achievement-boosting strategies.
On Tuesday, the Princeton Review released its second annual ranking of the states' testing and accountability systems - rendered all the more timely by the requirements of NCLB.
Readers of these columns know that I've been a wee bit ambivalent about the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act. So when I was asked to discuss it at the recent educator awards ceremony of the Milken Family Foundation, the likeliest - and most boring - approach was to give an equivocal speech, full of buts, howevers and maybes. Yawn.
In his New York Times column this week, the curmudgeonly Michael Winerip attempts to discredit the voucher movement by questioning Harvard scholar Paul Peterson's findings from a 2000 study of a New York City voucher experiment - a study that, according to Peterson's team, showed vouchers significantly improving achievement for black students.
Last week, District of Columbia Mayor Anthony Williams shocked both voucher friends and foes when he came out publicly in support of an experimental D.C. voucher program. In February, when the White House released its 2004 budget proposal, which included funding for the D.C. voucher program, Mayor Williams, along with D.C. school board president Peggy Cooper Cafritz and D.C.
This report, published jointly by the Fordham Institute and The Broad Foundation, contends that American public education faces a 'crisis in leadership' that cannot be alleviated from traditional sources of school principals and superintendents. Its signers do not believe this crisis can be fixed by conventional strategies for preparing, certifying and employing education leaders. Instead, they urge that first-rate leaders be sought outside the education field, earn salaries on par with their peers in other professions, and gain new authority over school staffing, operations and budgets.
Policy Study Associates, Inc. October 2002
U.S. Department of EducationSeptember 2002
Alan Wolfe, editor, Princeton University PressJanuary 2003
National Center for Education Statistics March 2003
David F. Salisbury, The Cato InstituteMarch 20, 2003School Vouchers and Students with DisabilitiesNational Council on DisabilityApril 15, 2003
Yesterday, by a vote of 251-171, the House passed a $125.9 billion, seven-year reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
The U.S. Department of Education has reorganized itself to focus more attention and resources upon scientifically based research and education programs with proven results. Though many believe this new focus will ultimately boost student achievement, some education experts are cautioning reformers to learn from mistakes of the past.
On April 10, the lower house of the California legislature passed an amendment to the Education Code that would allow teacher unions to post political propaganda in public schools.
After being chided by education officials in Washington for trying to sidestep the No Child Left Behind Act's "highly qualified" teacher mandate, the California state Board of Education is still struggling to define what makes a teacher "highly qualified" to comply with federal guidelines.
The Department of Education released a proposal this week that would overhaul and consolidate the 37-year old Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) to make it more efficient and cost-effective. The current system is comprised of 16 clearinghouses devoted to specific subject areas, which, under the Department's new plan, would be consolidated and run by a single contractor.
Last week, Standard and Poor's released its newest analysis of the performance of the charter schools run by Central Michigan University (CMU). The results are mixed.
People (myself included) who favor the radical overhaul of educators' training are wont to suggest that ed schools should become more like journalism schools: optional institutions that you attend if you think they add value but that you're not obliged to attend before entering this profession, so long as somebody wants to hire you and give you a chance.
The Indiana Center for EvaluationMarch 2003
The Learning First AllianceMarch 2003
The National Center for Education StatisticsApril 2003
Nobody likes having their budgets cut or income diminished. But my gracious, what a lot of griping, blaming and gnashing of teeth there has been in recent weeks with regard to public-school budgets. A blizzard of articles has chronicled the fiscal agonies of school systems whose revenues are pinched by the present downturn in state and municipal tax collections.
John E. Chubb and Tom Loveless, eds. Brookings Institution Press2002
Andrew Zucker, Robert Kuzma, Louise Yarnall, Camille Marder, Teachers College PressJanuary 2003
Dan Goldhaber, The University of WashingtonMarch 2003
The challenge of basing education policy on sound researchEarlier this year, Mathematica Policy Research released a sophisticated study of federally funded after-school programs showing that such programs do not raise the academic achievement of participating students.