Yesterday, the Maryland state board of education voted 9-2 to make the state's high school assessment tests a requirement for graduation beginning with the class of 2009. The move makes Maryland one of 19 states that have mandated graduation exit exams. According to the proposal, by 2009 all students would be required to pass at minimum the state's "functional tests" in reading, math,
This year, Colorado became the first state to pass a statewide voucher program after last year's landmark Zelman ruling. A legal challenge to the program was inevitable, but we were truly astonished to hear that a district judge has barred the Colorado school voucher program on the grounds that it violates "local control" of schools.
Rolf K. Blank, Council of Chief State School OfficersNovember 2003
The Thomas B. Fordham FoundationNovember 2003
Herbert J. Walberg and Joseph L. Bast, Hoover Institution PressNovember 2003
MassInsight EducationOctober 2003
This week, a New York City Council hearing intended to be a debate about the contentious, union-mandated teacher "work rules" (which limit, among other things, how long a teacher can work each day, how schools set faculty meeting agendas, and how teachers are hired and fired) devolved into a heated argument between council member Eva Moskowitz and NYC teachers' union president Randi Weingarten.
An "educational revolution is under way" in India, writes the New York Times, as millions of low-income parents dig deep to furnish private schooling for their children, a luxury once reserved for the well-to-do.
Trying to out-sing the chorus of negativism surrounding No Child Left Behind, the Hartford Courant reports that 100 minority superintendents have signed a letter expressing support for the law. "We need to be held accountable. We should not be making excuses like, 'Oh, this kid is from a poor neighborhood,'" said Hartford school chief Robert Henry.
Two years ago, the Gates and Casey foundations made grants to Brookings to host a group called the National Working Commission on School Choice, chaired by the University of Washington's Paul Hill and consisting of 13 other members, mainly academics, deemed to represent a reasonably wide spectrum of the informed school-choice debate.
As almost everybody knows, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) last week released - faster than ever before
After the Supreme Court's recent ruling in two Michigan affirmative action cases, Gratz and Grutter, legal scholars predicted that a flurry of suits would seek to round out the Court's somewhat confusing jurisprudence on this topic. One of these cases, Doe v.
In a surprise announcement given after a "hastily called" school board meeting, D.C. school superintendent Paul Vance announced his resignation. When pressed for details about why he was leaving so abruptly, he cited several reasons, including the move by D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams to try to gain control over the beleaguered school system, the system's financial problems, and the D.C.
United States General Accounting OfficeOctober 2003
Jennifer O. Aguirre and Matthew Ladner, Children's Educational Opportunity FoundationNovember 4, 2003
Katrina Bulkley and Priscilla Wohlstetter, editors, Teachers College PressNovember 2003
Kevin Carey, The Education TrustOctober 2003
At first glance, the move by Barnstable, Massachusetts to transform all of its traditional district schools to charter schools is a bold and worthwhile reform experiment. The fine print, however, shows that plan to be a bit more, well, complex.
In 1999, the then head of the Colorado Springs NAACP, Willie Breazell, Sr. was fired for writing a pro-school choice column - an unforgivable sin in the eyes of the leadership of many African-American pressure groups.
Call it the last frontier of accountability: a former Louisiana school board member is pushing an initiative to withhold the $800-per-month salaries of school board members who oversee parishes with failing schools. "The accountability system is looking hard at everybody - the children, the teachers. Let's put the school board members in that category," said John Crose, recently of the St.
"Behaviorism," says the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "purports to explain human and animal behavior in terms of external physical stimuli, responses, learning histories, and (for certain types of behavior) reinforcements. . . . To illustrate, consider a food-deprived rat in an experimental chamber.
Good news on teacher quality: the Idaho state board of education has voted to accept the new Passport to Teaching test as a route to certification. Developed by the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, the test makes mastery of content knowledge the central factor in determining whether a teacher is qualified.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), better known as the Nation's Report Card, has been used for 34 years to test representative samples of students in math, reading, writing, geography, U.S. history, and other subjects.
Though Congress will not complete (nor the Senate even commence) reauthorization of the Higher Education Act until next year, the debate is in full swing.
Jay Mathews weighs in with an even-handed column debunking ten myths about NCLB. He gets it pretty much right, managing in the process to tweak both the law's critics and supporters.
Peter Frumkin, Annie E. Casey FoundationOctober 2003
Ruth Curran Neild, Elizabeth Useem, Eva F. Travers, and Joy Lesnick, Research for Action2003
Krista Kafer, The Heritage FoundationOctober 29, 2003
David Conley, Director, Standards for Success, Associate Professor, University of Oregon2003
Arnold Schwarzenegger's previous foray into education policy (a statewide ballot initiative on after-school programs) left something to be desired.
