A lot of people, and not just Republicans, have been waiting for John McCain to unveil his thinking about education policy. While Barack Obama has made multiple speeches on the subject (most recently to both teacher union conferences) and has elaborate position papers on his campaign website, the Arizona senator said little, except for tantalizing bits about his own education.
Critics of NYC schools chancellor Joel Klein (of which there is at least one important one in this office) and/or Al Sharpton (ditto) may not like reports that the duo is
This fall, Denver Public Schools will introduce the Mile High Parent Campaign, which encourages moms and dads to devote 5,280 minutes a year to their children's educations. Cities situated at lower elevations are advised not to emulate the plan.
Why don't we??round up??some Los Angeles high school students, put them in a room together, and ask them to pontificate??about why Asian students do better academically than Latino students?
Will variations on this wine trick never grow old? Never, it seems. Yes, there is an education angle .
The candidate's education plan is available. From a reform standpoint, there really is??much to like.
Perhaps the U.S. could foment more such strikes in other nations, and thereby give its students a better shot on comparative??international tests.??In the U.K.:
A??new "quick review" out of the What Works Clearinghouse finds that Teach for America teachers improved student performance on standardized end-of-course tests in math and science-by about one-tenth of a standard deviation. This is equivalent to moving a student from the 50th to the 54th percentile.??
"We Need Someone Like Michelle Rhee" proclaims an editorial headline in the South Korean newspaper
John McCain is supposed to take the stage in 40 minutes at the NAACP convention in Cincinnati.
Just days after Fordham Institute president Checker Finn wrote in the Education Gadfly that "nobody I know under 30 much bothers either with newspapers or radio/TV news," evidence of intelligent, newsprint-scouring life under 30 has been documented (below) in his own offices.
He's supposed to get into the details when he speaks to the NAACP tomorrow, but John McCain didn't leave education out of his speech to the National Council of La Raza yesterday. From the Los Angeles Times :
According to the Montgomery Advertiser, Alabama has announced a revolution in higher educ
The Washington Post reports that Maryland has shown huge gains in test scores, particularly a
Columnist Jay Mathews writes in today's Washington Post about Fordham's latest report, High-Achieving Students in the Era of No Child Left Behind. Here's a teaser:
Randi Weingarten, soon to be the head of the American Federation of Teachers, would have us believe that the ideas she proposes as fixes to k-12 public education are new.
On steamy summer days such as this one, when the education news is reduced to a trickle, one must seek other sources by which to slake his eduthirst. The Harvard Educational Review arrived last week in the mail, and today I decided to read it.
Fun factoid of the day: Neither the ACT nor the College Board/ETS (giver of the SAT) tells colleges or universities why they cancel student scores. Joe Shmoe faints during a test? Joe Shmoe has his pal Freddy take the test for him? All the same in the testing companies' eyes. They'll cancel the score and let the student take the test again.
The Economist reports that Lousiana Governor Bobby Jindal apparently struck a deal with state legislators to get his voucher bill passed???a 123 percent pay raise for them in return for an escape from failing schools
Editorializing about the recent test score gains in Washington, D.C., under new schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, the Washington Times asks : Why did the city ever let Arlene Ackerman go--the last superintendent to improve so much?
"A group of Toronto researchers have compiled a body of evidence showing that bookworms have exceptionally strong people skills."
That's a fair way to describe presidential candidate Ralph Nader's opposition to No Child Left Behind, as presented in this Washington Post
That's my synopsis of this E.J. Dionne column about our current economic tribulations.
Catching up on the news out of the National Education Association conference earlier this month, I noticed that the union's "representative assembly," in its infinite wisdom, voted against accepting private school teachers and staff as members.
I'm always on the lookout for interesting education research, and Natascha (Fordham intern and fellow Wahoo) does a nice job helping me track down studies. She found this one carried out??by researchers from our favorite university.
More on yesterday's announcement that D.C. test scores are up. A Washington Post article today says that some principals are attributing their schools' successes to Michelle Rhee.
While offering advice on how Obama can defend accusations of socialist tendencies, Matt Miller expounds upon the idea of merit pay in the pages of today's Wall Street Journal. Miller writes:
Some days our blog exhausts me. Not writing for it--I'm usually too busy--just reading it and thinking how I would have said something differently myself or would have bitten my tongue and said nothing at all.
