What the Research Reveals About Charter Schools
The Center for Education Reform has issued a listing of 65 studies of charter schools, together with brief summaries of each. It's not comprehensive.
The Center for Education Reform has issued a listing of 65 studies of charter schools, together with brief summaries of each. It's not comprehensive.
This unique survey compares the views of parents with children in private, public and charter schools on the quality of their own schools as well as a range of education reform issues. Conducted in Dayton, Ohio, home to one of the nation's fastest growing charter school programs as well as a strong private voucher program, the data show that, while public school parents are generally less satisfied with their children's present schools, the overwhelming majority of parents and non-parents support bold reform in the public school system. The survey also shows strong support among all groups for publicly funded vouchers, higher academic standards and performance pay for teachers.
This report traces an initiative that was launched a decade ago by business and government leaders seeking to spark a transformation of K-12 education in American. The New American Schools Development Corporation (NASDC) vowed to cast aside traditional ideas about schools and apply a no-nonsense, business-savvy approach to the design and deployment of "break-the-mold" schools. Ten years later, New American Schools (as the organization is now named) looks a lot more like a member of the education establishment. Mirel's fascinating report shows how this happened.
Mass Insight Education Fall 2001
North Central Regional Educational Laboratory May 2001
Ohio Department of Education September 2001
Center for Urban Research and Policy Studies, University of Chicago August 2001
Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Pennsylvania August 2001
It's the eve of Yom Kippur, when many people of the Jewish faith reflect on their transgressions, atone for their misdeeds, and try to get right with God and their fellow men. Not Bill Ayers. His new book - which I confess I cannot bring myself to purchase - seeks instead to justify the heinous acts of his youth.
While small schools are increasingly seen by experts as a promising way to boost student achievement (see Smaller, Safer, Saner Successful Schools reviewed below), parents and teachers have other ideas.
There is nothing new about the charges raised by a trio of recent publications on college athletics: that campus sports once fostered values like teamwork and perseverance, but now promote crass commercialism while contributing to a campus atmosphere of play and partying that distracts students from academic pursuits. Yet some of the details might shock you.
Critics of international education comparisons often complain that they are misleading because the variation in student performance is so great in the U.S. "The achievement of American schools is a lot more variable than is student achievement from elsewhere," asserted Berliner and Biddle in The Manufactured Crisis. A new study by three RAND researchers says that's not so.
Tom Loveless, The Brown Center on Education Policy, The Brookings Institution September 2001
Carrie Lips and Jennifer Jacoby, Cato InstituteSeptember 17, 2001
The school choice movement is gaining in complexity as lawmakers increasingly opt for tax credits instead of vouchers as a way to help citizens, poor and otherwise, pay private school tuition for their children.
WAY TO GO, MR. PRESIDENT! THAT WAS A HELLUVA SPEECH. WE'RE WITH YOU ALL THE WAY! It's been more than a little upsetting to watch the education community respond to last Tuesday's terrible attack on the United States. The prize for greediest, most self-promoting and solipsistic response goes to an outfit called the Public Education Network.
The New York City Board of Education has figured out how to privatize schools without seeming to. Last spring, parents at five troubled public schools voted down the Edison Project, and it appeared that nonpublic managers were not welcome in the school system. That turns out to be untrue.
The day before the disaster in New York City, The New York Times reported good news about City University of New York. This is a story that deserves to be told, not forgotten. One of the most polarized debates in New York City in recent years occurred when the trustees of the City University of New York (CUNY) decided two years ago to set minimum standards for entry for freshmen.
In response to parents who were uncomfortable with the existing sex ed curriculum, one school district in Minnesota created a two-track program, offering an abstinence-only class alongside the traditional one, which covers contraception, abortion, homosexuality, and other hot topics. Parents could enroll their child in the class of their choice.
To get around uniform salary schedules that prevent schools and districts from paying extra for teachers with rare skills, these teachers could be hired on a contract basis and shared by many schools, suggests education policy thinker Paul Hill.
U.S. Department of Education 2001
Indiana Center for Evaluation September 2001
High-achieving, high-poverty schools are no longer a novelty for elementary or middle school-aged kids, but helping disadvantaged youngsters succeed in high school has been more challenging. An article in Teacher Magazine describes the efforts of an organized group of parents in California to prevent their kids from becoming high school dropout statistics.
If your neighborhood school announces that it is introducing a new kind of instruction centered around student projects, you'll want to visit Teachers College Record's website, TCRecord.org, which this week reprises a 1921 symposium on the project method called "Dangers and Difficulties of the Project Method and How to Overcome Them." We recommend "Projects and Purposes in Teaching and Learning
Union and school district negotiators have reached a tentative agreement on changes in Cincinnati's teacher pay-for-performance plan, this in response to complaints from teachers about the evaluation process.
On September 11 at 8:45 a.m., I was having a cup of coffee and reading the morning paper when I heard a tremendous boom behind me. I live in Brooklyn, about three city blocks from New York Harbor, and directly across the Harbor from my neighborhood is New York City's financial district.
An examination of pass-fail records from tests of basic skills and subject knowledge taken by Illinois teachers over the last thirteen years revealed that 5,243 current teachers had failed at least one exam, even though these tests are pitched at an extremely low level.