Parents, not ed schools, oppose test-driven accountability
I read your comments about protests against standards-based, test-driven state accountability systems [see "The law people love to hate--and pretend to love,".
I read your comments about protests against standards-based, test-driven state accountability systems [see "The law people love to hate--and pretend to love,".
The April/May 2003 issue of American Enterprise, organized around the theme Race, Broken Schools, and Affirmative Action, contains several interesting articles on school choice.
Yesterday's New York Times reports on two new studies that challenge test critics' claims that high-stakes testing undermines learning and hurts struggling students. Both studies instead find that high-stakes testing brings about academic gains, particularly for minority students.
A plan developed with the assistance of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association and backed by the school board would replace the traditional teacher salary schedule with a system of incentives based on performance if teachers vote to approve it next year.
Launched just over two years ago, New Leaders for New Schools (NLNS) recruits and trains outstanding prospective principals who lack conventional credentials and puts them on a fast track to public (and charter) school leadership positions.
The Council of Chief State Schools OfficersMarch 2003
The Philanthropy RoundtableJohn J. Miller2003
Alan B. Krueger and Pei ZhuPrinceton UniversityApril 2003
Margaret E. Raymond and Eric Hanushek, Education NextSummer 2003
National Board on Educational Testing and Public PolicyJanuary 2003
Center on Reinventing Public Education Marguerite Roza, Mary Beth Celio, James Harvey and Susan Wishon January 2003
While eliminating elected school boards and replacing them with appointed boards or mayoral control is all the rage, AEI resident scholar Rick Hess argues in the April issue of the American School Board Journal that there is no reason to expect improvements to follow from such changed forms of governance.
Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Joseph Olchefske announced his resignation earlier this week, saying that a $34 million financial crisis that has unfolded in the district on his watch has made it impossible for him to lead effectively.
Checker was right to skewer Michael Winerip for his grouchy piece, "A Pervasive Dismay On a Bush School Law," [see "The Law People Love to Hate - and Pretend to Love," http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=16#242It is always annoying when reporters proclaim that grumblings are the manifestation of a zeitgeist (
College instructors value grammar more than high school teachers do While college instructors rank "grammar and usage" as a student's most important writing skill, high-school teachers rank it as least important, and only 69 percent of high-school English teachers say they teach their students grammar and usage skills, according to a new survey by ACT.
Iraq is blessedly free today, but it's also a mess in need of reconstruction.
The Los Angeles Unified School Board voted unanimously last week to oppose the state's high school exit exam. The board, which has a new union-backed majority (at least for now - one union-backed incumbent still faces a run-off in May), hopes to influence the state board to postpone or drop the requirement that students pass an exit exam before being allowed to graduate from high school.
States and districts have much more flexibility to meet the "highly qualified teacher" requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act than most people acknowledge; in fact, states have an historic opportunity to revamp their teacher preparation and certification systems, according to Michael Petrilli, Associate Deputy Under Secretary at the U.S. Department of Education.
Policy Analysis for California EducationApril 2003
Robert Holland, The Lexington InstituteMarch 2003
John U. OgbuLawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.2003
Krista Kafer, The Heritage FoundationMarch 26, 2003
Patricia M. Lines, The ERIC Clearinghouse on Educational Management2003
Council of the Great City SchoolsMarch 2003
Now that a scientific consensus has been reached on how best to teach children to decode words, the time has come to move on to challenge of boosting their reading comprehension. The Spring 2003 issue of American Educator focuses on this topic. The lead article, by E.D. Hirsch, explains how weak comprehension ruins poor children's chances to achieve academic success.
After reading experts criticized Month by Month Phonics, the reading curriculum that he had originally selected for citywide implementation, on grounds that it lacked evidence of effectiveness, New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein has quietly decided to supplement it with a phonics-intensive program developed by Voyager Expanded Learning and based on sound reading research.
Last week, the Colorado Senate narrowly passed a pilot voucher bill that, when signed, will mark the first voucher plan enacted since last year's landmark Zelman decision. The Colorado House, which passed a similar version of the bill on February 19, is reviewing the Senate amendments.
Arkansas, Arizona, South Dakota, Kansas, Vermont, Iowa and Idaho are presently weighing proposals to reduce the number of school districts within their borders by consolidating some of them into larger units.
Parents, principals, and policymakers who want to know what research shows about the effectiveness of the Core Knowledge (CK) curriculum will find a useful summary in an article in the Core Knowledge Foundation newsletter. It summarizes three large studies that compare the academic performance of students in CK schools with pupils in control groups.
Just five years after California voters approved Proposition 227, which replaced bilingual education with English-only programs for most California LEP students, the number of English learners who scored "proficient' on the state's language test has risen significantly.