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Commentary
8.10.2005

The South will rise again

The Dukes of Hazzard isn't the only Southern revival this summer: the recent NAEP scores show southern states accelerating faster than the General Lee.

Commentary
8.10.2005

High school reform redux

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

At their mid-summer meeting last month, the governors rededicated themselves to high school reform - and sought to demonstrate that commitment by asserting near-consensus on a uniform definition of completion rates, one that, properly done, could go a distance toward standardizing America's miserably uneven and often dishonest data on high school graduates and dropouts (see Gadfly comm

Commentary
8.10.2005

An obit for ed schools

Gadfly can only imagine the expressions of shock and awe as ed school profs and deans awoke at their favorite summering spots to find the Grey Lady of Times Square asking, "Who Needs Education Schools?" The answer, according to this expansive and mostly astute article by Anemona Hartacollis, is pretty much nobody.

Commentary
8.10.2005

Time un-muddles the middle

Last week's Time was all about "being 13." Its conclusion: "Today's 13-year-olds, growing up in a world more connected, more competitive, more complex than the one their parents had to navigate as kids, so far show every sign of rising to the challenge." Perhaps, but are their schools "rising to the challenge," too?

Commentary
7.27.2005

Success has a handful of admirers

Two weeks ago we noted, "Success has a thousand fathers and many will try to claim credit" for the good news about rising NAEP scores (see here).

Commentary
7.27.2005

Getting "The Mission"

In the latest City Journal, Kay Hymowitz discusses Bill Cosby's parenting-power crusade among poor African-Americans and links it to the failure of government social welfare programs to close the education and economic gaps. A typical Cosby rant: "Proper education has to begin at home. . . .

Commentary
7.27.2005

Mayhem in the middle

Middle schools, like middle children, are just plain misunderstood. There is pretty clear evidence from the recent NAEP results that middle schools are where academic achievement in America falters and begins its accelerating decline, as the Los Angeles Times argues in a cracker-jack editorial this week.

Commentary
7.27.2005

Merit pay: Not so fast, governors!

Kate Walsh

Merit pay for teachers has gotten a lot of play recently (for examples, see here). Without a doubt, the principle that some teachers ought to get paid more than others has gained political currency around the country.

Report
7.21.2005
Governance, Private School Choice, Standards

Fwd: It's All About the Kids

Martin A. Davis, Jr.

In just more than five years, Mary Anne Stanton has led 13 Catholic schools from high-poverty Washington, D.C. neighborhoods into a consortium that has not only strengthened each school's financial health, but has also greatly improved the academic performance of the children the schools are charged with educating. To get there, she's installed a new standards-based curriculum, shaken up old bureaucratic approaches, and streamlined operations. In its latest Fwd: Arresting Insights in Education, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation presents a compelling story of just how much change can be made by one determined school leader with a vision.

Commentary
7.20.2005

Still swimming in Lake Wobegon

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

It's not easy today even to recall the stir created in 1987 when an obscure West Virginia physician and his never-heard-from-before one-man advocacy organization called "Friends for Education" released a little study titled "Nationally Normed Elementary Achievement Testing in America's Public Schools: How All 50 States Are Above the National Average." Swiftly dubbed the "Lake Wobegon report" af

Commentary
7.20.2005

Success has a thousand fathers

Last week, offering up some "First thoughts on the NAEP" (see here), we noted that "Success has a thousand fathers and many will try to claim credit" for the good news about achievement gains amongst 9-year-olds.

Commentary
7.20.2005

Good news on grad rates

No, the percentage of kids graduating hasn't gone up, but after years of prodding by reformers on the left and right - especially Jay Greene, the Education Trust, and the Urban Institute - 45 governors have committed to a common formula for calculating the rates themselves. Worth celebrating, yes, but turning their promise into reality will be no small task.

Commentary
7.20.2005

How about "deferred intelligence"?

Even the hard-knock Brits are sometimes subjected to the touchy-feely politics of their own education establishment. At next week's annual conference of the Professional Association of Teachers, Liz Beattie, a retired school teacher, will recommend that the word "fail" be abolished from classrooms and replaced with the less offensive "deferred success." Ms.

Commentary
7.20.2005

Less Dewey, more Shakespeare

In the newest edition of MassINC's CommonWealth magazine, Sandra Stotsky elucidates the well-known problems of teacher education (see Arthur Levine's highly-critical piece, "Educating School Leaders") and offers pragmatic advice for Massachusetts policy makers.

Commentary
7.20.2005

Live free and die

It was a bad omen for the Free State when the Old Man of the Mountain fell off, but this is even worse: New Hampshire's very first charter school, Franklin Career Academy, is closing for want of state funding. The state commissioner of education, Lyonel Tracy, explained that there was nothing wrong with the school: "The students were doing well.