Displaying 15871-15900 of 17757 results
Commentary
10.7.2004

Tapping the next "greatest generation" in education

Marc Porter Magee

Everyone "knows" that we have a looming crisis in education staffing, as millions of Baby Boomers retire from teaching and school leadership posts and too few qualified people step forward to replace them.

Commentary
10.7.2004

Good talk - soon the walk?

The headline could be straight from The Onion: "Janey finds widespread failure in D.C. schools." No kidding! If such perspicacity is all it takes, Gadfly should have put in for the superintendent's job himself. But we do like the noise that new D.C.

Commentary
10.7.2004

High expectations at High Tech High

If you don't know High Tech High in San Diego, you should. It's one of those schools that pulses, from hard-charging principal Larry Rosenstock, through the excellent teaching staff to the many at-risk kids who are succeeding at this charter school. Rosenstock's philosophy is simple: treat kids like adults and they'll act like adults.

Commentary
10.7.2004

Calling a spade, a spade

Hurrah for England's chief inspector of schools, David Bell, and his plain-spoken criticism of goofball progressivism in education. In a recent lecture at the Hermitage School in England, Bell argued that students need the return to a well-rounded curriculum that includes a focus on basic skills.

Commentary
10.7.2004

Losing the skill war

Lou Gerstner, former IBM chair and founder of the "Teaching Commission", penned a trenchant op-ed in yesterday's Wall Street Journal that says American companies are outsourcing jobs not just because they can find cheaper labor overseas, but also because workers abroad, particularly in Asia, have stronger skills.

Commentary
10.7.2004

National Review "Education 2004"

National Review's annual education issue contains much good stuff, including Rick Hess on school funding and Clint Bolick on the fitful progress of school choice. We especially recommend Richard Arum on the collapse of school discipline and the effect that's had on the academic environment, especially in urban school districts.

Commentary
10.7.2004

And now for the kitchen sink

Opponents of Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson - a brave soul who dared support a statewide graduation test, charter schools, and the suspension of ever-popular class size and teacher pay initiatives - are pulling out all stops in their attempt to unseat her in November.

Commentary
10.7.2004

Ask not what your school can do for you&

In this month's Atlantic, Jonathan Rauch poses the question: "Suppose I told you that I knew of an education reform guaranteed to raise the achievement levels of American students; that this reform would cost next to nothing and would require no political body's approval; and that it could be implemented overnight by anybody of a mind of undertake it.

Commentary
10.3.2004

The Proficiency Illusion

Michael J. Petrilli, Chester E. Finn, Jr.

No Child Left Behind made many promises. One of the most important of them being a pledge to Mr. and Mrs. Smith that they would get an annual snapshot of how their little Susie is doing in school.

Commentary
10.3.2004

No honeymoon for Alonso

New Baltimore schools CEO Andres Alonso is already in trouble. He wants to require teachers to spend one, weekly 45-minute period engaged in collaborative planning with their colleagues. And for that, the city teachers union has gone on the attack, scheduling a no-confidence vote on the CEO. Upon hearing that the union planned such a vote, a perplexed Alonso asked, "Why?

Commentary
10.3.2004

Cheap shots

Negar Azimi's New York Times Magazine piece about Teach For America might be new, but her criticisms of the program are not. Take, for example, the idea that TFA is for college graduates a "résumé-burnishing pit stop before moving on to bigger things." That may be partly true--but so what?

Commentary
10.3.2004

Clean start

In Washington, D.C., school success is measured by the most basic of yardsticks. This year, for example, all 146 schools in the District opened on time, and almost all of them had the supplies they needed.

Commentary
10.3.2004

Fantasy land

Bob Herbert can usually be counted on to dispense columns that are either off-base or banal. His latest piece is certainly banal (check out the title); but it's none too credible, either, because Herbert is calling for a "wholesale transformation of the public school system" that, were some politician to actually advance it, he, yes he, Herbert, would surely denounce.

Commentary
10.3.2004

A tangible difference

We know that schools and school systems share a lot in common with businesses. Do they also resemble nations?

Commentary
10.3.2004

Weapon recovered

Gadfly now reads--courtesy of the Columbus Dispatch, a public-records request, and the Ohio Alliance of Public Charter Schools--that indeed Attorney General Marc Dann was doing the teacher union's bidding when he (a) settled out of court an ill-conceived NEA lawsuit against charter schools (that he likely would have won if it had gone to trial) and (b) tackled low-p

Commentary
9.29.2004

The harm done by textbook adoption

Diane Ravitch

The Mad, Mad World of Textbook Adoption, released today by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, is a splendid survey of what's wrong with textbooks today and how they went awry. The main problem besetting textbooks, we know, is their quality.

Commentary
9.29.2004

Scientific illiteracy among the education elite

As any education researcher will tell you, conducting a "scientific" study of educational programs or practices is difficult at best, primarily because so many factors contribute to pupil achievement, including students' previous knowledge, teacher quality, the degree of parental and community support, etc.

Commentary
9.29.2004

Charter achievement redux

Caroline Hoxby recaps the Great Charter Debate (or should we call it Ambush?) of 2004 in the Wall Street Journal this week.

Commentary
9.29.2004

A third way on social promotion

The New York Times this week featured a column by Arthur Levine (often a sensible fellow, despite being president of Teachers College) outlining a "third way" on social promotion. Levine contends that "neither social promotion nor holding back students works. Leaving students back increases their dropout rate. . . .

Commentary
9.29.2004

The White House speaks!

You've watched Rotherham and Finn duke it out over the Bush administration's record on education. So let's hear from the administration, shall we? This week, the White House released a new "policy book" detailing its education successes and pointing toward future plans.

Commentary
9.29.2004

UK inches toward merit pay

The British House of Commons education committee recently recommended greater flexibility in teacher pay as a way to combat specific teacher shortages. In particular, they recommend that "super teachers" be given bonuses for working in tough schools, and that schools that face persistent recruiting problems should be able to pay more to entice new teachers.

Commentary
9.29.2004

We won't say we told you so, but. . . .

Last week, Gadfly editorialized that "Putting most of the available energy, political capital, brain power and money into 'helping' districts engage in chartering rather than devoting those (limited) assets to advancing the frontier of independent charter schools: removing caps on their numbers and enrollments, creating