Thomas Stewart, Patrick J. Wolf, Stephen Q. Cornman, Kenann McKenzie-ThompsonGeorgetown University Public Policy InstituteDecember 2007
We hear often about the decline of reading and what a nasty harbinger it is. But seldom do we hear the case made as convincingly as Caleb Crain puts it in the December 24th New Yorker.
Reading First, funded at $1 billion per year, is among the most promising federal efforts to help the poor. Title I, funded at $12 billion per year, is not nearly so effective.
Boys will be boys. But not if Ana Homayoun has anything to say about it. Homayoun is one of a burgeoning number of tutors who have realized that many of boys' school difficulties stem from lack of organization.
Some of the best food to be found in England has its origins in Delhi and Puducherry. Now, it seems, some of the best education to be found in Japan has its home in India, too.
No serious person thinks students who require special education should not get it. It's undeniable, however, that public schools have a history of shunting into special education classes many students who suffer from no learning disability but who may simply lag academically for one reason or another, or who have trouble behaving.
Washington, D.C., parents could not have been pleased after reading about the haphazard way that curriculum decisions are made in their city. Two recent Washington Post articles paint a story of administrative incompetence and misplaced power.
Can Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa catch a break? Not only does he have to battle with hardnosed politicians in Sacramento, intransigent school board members, tough union types, and angry parents--now he's catching flak from the kids!
I thoroughly enjoyed Liam Julian's piece "Check yourself before you wreck yourself." As the director of a teacher training initiative at Haskins Laboratories, practicing teachers, particularly the "big-hearted 22 year-olds," tell me they don't know how to teach children to read.
Marc Lampkin--who runs the Bill Gates and Eli Broad-funded $60 million "ED in '08" initiative to make education a top-tier issue in the presidential campaign--doesn't believe that his purpose is to make education a top-tier issue in the presidential campaign.
Public AgendaDecember 2007
Advocates for Children and YouthDecember 2007
In July 2003, President George W. Bush visited a Maryland elementary school and called for legislation to "hold Head Starts [sic] accountable for getting the job done." Last week, he reluctantly rubber-stamped a bill that contains almost none of the reforms he advocated.
Dallas education administrators are learning a valuable lesson: teachers are reluctant to work in tough classrooms, even if you pay them $6,000 extra.
"The popular value of ________ creativity and autonomy as high priorities must give way to a willingness to follow certain carefully prescribed ________ practices."
Rhode Island's 5,000-student Cumberland School District has hit a rough patch. Its state funding has dropped by $6 million over the last decade. And in neighboring Massachusetts, student test scores in districts with similar demographics are nearly double those that Cumberland is able to muster. But the city's mayor, Daniel McKee, has a plan.
Mike Huckabee made news--and history--last week when the New Hampshire affiliate of the National Education Association endorsed him for president in the upcoming primary--the first time it ever recommended a GOP candidate.
Robin J. Lake, editorCenter on Reinventing Public Education's National Charter Research ProjectDecember 2007
Tom LovelessBrookings InstitutionDecember 2007
William H. Schmidt, et alDecember 2007
2007 may be known as the year when the "soft bigotry of low expectations" made a comeback. It started with Education Week's dubious "Chance-for-Success Index" (motto: demography is destiny) and is finishing with another doozy from Michael "No Excuse Left Behind" Winerip.
A version of this editorial appeared as an op-ed in the December 11, 2007, Columbus Dispatch.
George Will doesn't much like the federal government, and he certainly doesn't much like the federal government getting involved in education. So it comes as no surprise that he doesn't like No Child Left Behind. More precisely, he loathes it.
Universities have long complained that far too many of their incoming students are ill-prepared for the rigors of college; the problem is particularly acute for low-income and minority students. Several institutions are actually doing something about it.
I enjoyed reading Mike Petrilli's recent article "Parties like its 1999" (November 29, 2007). But I wonder if the lens Petrilli uses to evaluate the education proposals of presidential candidates fails to factor in a consideration of the federal role versus the state role in education.
Evolution debates are lighting up the opinion pages of Florida newspapers. On one side are supporters of proposed revisions to the state's science standards, which, if approved by the Board of Education early in 2008, will include the "e-word" for the first time in 11 years. On the other side are creationists and their allies, of which board member Donna Callaway is one.
The New York Times Magazine just published its "7th Annual Year in Ideas," and sandwiched between Wave Energy and Wikiscanning one finds Weapon-Proof School Gear. The gear in question is the backpack; Mike Pelonzi and Joe Curran have invented a bullet-proof variety.
Regarding a November 28 review by Emmy L. Partin:If I were writing your article, I would have to have called it, "Schools Are Worse than You Can Imagine!" And it would apply to publicly-funded schools nationwide along with many of the private schools.
More than a year ago, the Strive education partnership was formed with much fanfare in the Queen City to create a scholarship program much like the Kalamazoo Promise in Michigan.
