A recent article in Education Week notes that NEA members will be celebrating growth in the union's membership rolls at the union's annual shindig, opening later this week in Los Angeles. After last year's drop in "active teacher" membership figures - the first such drop in 28 years - the NEA looks to gain members this year on the strength of a new recruitment campaign.
Standard & Poor's, School Evaluation Services2005
Administration for Children and Families, Health and Human Services June 11, 2005
Katherine S. Neville, Rachel H. Sherman, and Carol E. Cohen, The Finance Project2005
Islamic schools are in the news this week. Time profiles an Islamic pre-K-12 school in suburban Chicago that has a mainstream curriculum and typical after-school activities, but also maintains traditional Islamic practices like dress codes, separation of the sexes, and regular prayer and Koran studies.
On Monday, the Department of Education released extensive new guidelines for states, districts, and providers of supplemental educational services, a complex, contentious and confused area of NCLB. States have complained that they were unclear on how best to implement the SES provisions of the law and needed more guidance.
In this month's Policy Review, Paul Hill chronicles one key element of Britain's two-decade old education reform strategy, one that does an imaginative job of blending private largesse, innovation and management expertise with public education.
G. Reid Lyon, champion of research-based reading instruction (i.e. Reading First) at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and adviser to the Bush administration on scientifically proven effective reading programs and much much more, is leaving his government post to join a private-sector effort to develop alternatives to traditional schools of education.
This week, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel features a week-long qualitative assessment of that city's landmark voucher program. Reporters visited 106 of Milwaukee's 115 "voucher schools" and emerged with an interesting but mixed story.
Kudos to StandardsWorks founder and Fordham friend Leslye Arsht, formerly the senior advisor to the Iraqi Minister of Education, who has won the Good Housekeeping award for women in government. Arsht braved insurgents, logistical nightmares, and blazing desert heat to help the Iraqi government rebuild its K-12 education system. We can't think of anyone more deserving.
Robin Lake and Lydia Rainey, Progressive Policy InstituteMay 2005
In the Journal of Teacher Education, Rick Hess writes that there is nothing unpredictable or even surprising about the debate over teacher training.
This week in the Los Angeles Times, Naomi Schaefer Riley describes the Broad Foundation's fellowship program that puts young, skilled executives from the private world into top positions in urban school districts.
The Association of Educational Publishers (www.edpress.org) asked me and several others to gaze into our crystal balls and identify five "trends/factors/events that will (or should) have significant impact on the substance and delivery of educational content over the next five years." This turned out to be an interesting exercise, the results of which I off
Mark Bauerlein, ed., Association of Literary Scholars and CriticsSpring 2005
National Center for Education StatisticsJune 2005The latest edition of NCES's vast, annual, congressionally-mandated Condition of Education (COE) has landed in our mailbox. Like everyone else, we're trying to separate the wheat from the chaff in this vast compendium. For starters, a few items of note:
Frederick M. Hess, Andrew P. Kelly, Harvard University Program in Education Policy and Governance May 2005Textbook Leadership? An Analysis of Leading Books Used in Principal PreparationFrederick M. Hess, Andrew P. Kelly, Harvard University Program in Education Policy and Governance May 2005
Lots of action but no resolution for Florida's Opportunity Scholarships. The state's Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday.
In the Wall Street Journal, Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman describes the history of the voucher movement, its philosophical foundations, and why choice in education is even more important today.
The Toronto Star reports that McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd. is considering selling advertising in college textbooks, the better to target free-spending college students. The company claims the ads are intended to bring "beneficial corporate and social awareness campaigns to the students." Gadfly sees infinite potential in this innovation.
Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy at MassINCSpring 2005
William G. Howell, editor, Brookings PressJune 2005
Lawrence A. Uzzell, Cato Institute May 2005
Lisa Petrides and Thad Nodine, Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management of EducationMay 2005
The spirit of Albert Shanker lives on, at least some days it does, at the union he once led. The latest edition of AFT's American Educator focuses on NCLB and concludes that accountability and standards are the right approach, but that substantial changes are required in the law - fix it, don't scrap it.
In this week's New Republic, Robert Gordon, a former Kerry education advisor, indicts his own party for straying from its egalitarian ideals and losing credibility on education policy. America's education system is obviously flawed, Gordon alleges, yet Democrats can only defend the failing status quo or attack any plans that don't involve more blank checks to the current system.
He's baaaaaack. Alan Bersin, deposed San Diego superintendent - a victim of a fierce union effort to undo reforms that were overturning settled ways of operating (see here) - has been named California Secretary of Education by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In the past, being valedictorian of one's high school class was mostly an opportunity to subject the assembled graduates and well-wishers to a string of mindless clich??s.
