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Commentary
6.1.2005

Chronicling the voucher kids

As the voucher flurry of 2005 winds down (see here and here for recent news), a few new developments have popped up.

Commentary
6.1.2005

Two impressions

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Japanese education reform redux

Commentary
5.25.2005

Readin', writin', politickin'

In the current Policy Review, David Davenport and Jeffrey Jones discuss the politics of literacy and its transformation from a local education issue to its current role in national public policy.

Commentary
5.25.2005

Charters news redux

Two great charter school stories this week. In New York City, recent tests that showed increases in proficiency rates citywide (see here) also showed charter schools outscoring their traditional public school peers.

Commentary
5.25.2005

Everything's fine in Finland!

This week, the Washington Post looks at Finland's highly-ranked public school system, which "graduates nearly every young person from vocational or high school, and sends nearly half of them on to higher education," and gained national attention after a first place ranking on PISA (see here for m

Commentary
5.25.2005

More money! Wait, maybe not

The Washington Unified School District in Sacramento wants to attract high-quality teachers to work in its worst schools. So it plans to pay those teachers more. (Governor Schwarzenegger has proposed something similar statewide.) This is a rather pedestrian practice in the real (meaning, non-education) world. So, of course, the local union is outraged.

Commentary
5.25.2005

Always blame standards

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

As everyone knows, last week the Yale Child Study Center issued a report indicating that pre-schoolers are three times more likely to be "expelled" from their programs than K-8 children are to be expelled from school.

Commentary
5.18.2005

Scopes, part deux

The Kansas State Board of Education has just wrapped up its evolution trial. Proponents of "intelligent design" have pushed the state to present a "more critical" view of evolution in Kansas classrooms and to move away from the definition of science in the state standards as a search for "natural explanations," which they say represents an endorsement of naturalism and atheism.

Commentary
5.18.2005

Small jumps in the Big Apple?

Given Gadfly's many doubts about Mayor Michael Bloomberg's education efforts (see "A rush to judgment?"), we pondered how to present the news that proficiency scores for Big Apple fourth graders have jumped 10 percent this year (accompanied by a slight dip among eighth graders).

Commentary
5.18.2005

Graduation or bust?

Much has been said about the specious nature of official high school graduation rates promulgated by states, districts, and the feds (see here for Jay Greene's February 2005 report on the subject). The message is beginning to take hold.

Commentary
5.18.2005

D-U-H

The Christian Science Monitor reports a resurgence of interest in spelling in American classrooms, a subject which, according to author and spelling zealot Richard Gentry, was dealt a setback by whole-language instruction in the 1980s.

Commentary
5.18.2005

Tossing the terror tots

A new report from the Yale University Child Study Center (see here) finds that pre-Kindergarten students are being expelled from their programs at rates much higher than students in K-12 are expelled from school.

Commentary
5.18.2005

Whither tenure?

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is bent on ending teacher tenure as we know it. If legislators won't budge, he's gathered signatures to put it on the ballot and let voters decide. "If they don't do their job," quoth the Gubernator, "then we go to special election without any doubt."

Commentary
5.11.2005

The testing blues

Michael Moore is the master of the subtle conspiracy charge, wherein a cabal is alleged with winks, nods, and innuendos without actually being stated. CNN has learned the lesson well. The cable network is airing a special on high-stakes testing (it premiered May 8 and will be shown again May 14).

Commentary
5.11.2005

Ravitch reviews the record

In Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, Diane Ravitch criticizes Big Apple Mayor Michael Bloomberg's education policies and chronicles his tumultuous tenure.

Commentary
5.11.2005

New schools and old

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Energy, enterprise, and ardor overflowed the hotel at the annual hootenanny of the New Schools Venture Fund, held last week near Silicon Valley.

Commentary
5.11.2005

News flash! Students unchallenged, apathetic

Anyone who has seen a student suffering from senioritis could have predicted the findings of this latest survey of high school students. An Indiana University study shows that a majority of high school students (55 percent) spend no more than three hours a week studying yet are still managing to maintain good grades (65 percent).

Commentary
5.11.2005

Bush-whacked

No matter what you think of Florida's package of school reforms over the past several years (See here for our analysis of the latest piece, the Voluntary Pre-K program) one has to be astonished at the deftness with which Governor Jeb Bush has moved his schools agenda (which seems to be working, see