This week marks the beginning not only of a new school year but also a new round of debate over vouchers. In a Washington Post op ed, D.C. school board president Peggy Cooper Cafritz, along with D.C. mayor Anthony Williams and D.C.
Lance T. Izumi with Matt Cox, Pacific Research InstituteAugust 2003
Louis G. Tornatzky, Harry P. Pachon, and Celina Torres, National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators and the Tomas Rivera Policy InstituteAugust 2003
Bryan Goodwin, Mid-continent Research for Education and LearningJuly 2003
The No Child Left Behind rubber is hitting the education road, where it's producing a lot of screeching brakes, skid marks and, especially, honking. A flock of noisy Canadian geese makes less noise than American public education griping about NCLB, the changes it is forcing, the injustices it is said to be inflicting and the difficulties of implementing it as Congress intended.
Around the country, the economic downturn and state and local budget shortfalls are forcing some schools to charge students to participate in activities that used to be open to all, free of charge.
As part of No Child Left Behind, states are now required to report what percentage of their teachers are "highly qualified" - in other words, what percentage has a bachelor's degree, state certification and clear knowledge of the subject they teach. It's that last clause that has many teachers and union officials up in arms.
So the news is good from the College Board: SAT scores are up sharply. That suggests that the strategies of recent years have been paying off, that students are taking more academic courses, and that they have greater incentive to prepare for tests like the SAT.
While many people hope that mayoral control will fix what ails big city school systems, reformers in New York City are beginning to realize that this Great Man approach may not, in fact, get the job done. Mayor Michael Bloomberg won control of the school system but what is he doing with it?
In the last Gadfly, we reported (without pleasure) on a South Carolina school district that was promoting grade inflation by mandating that no student could receive less than a 62 (out of 100) in his or her first semester.
William G. Ouchi, Simon and SchusterSeptember 2003
The New York Times recently published a two-part series on the newly discovered problem of "push-outs" in the New York City public schools. The articles charged that principals were pushing out low-performing students in order to protect their school's performance scores and attendance rates.
Jay Greene and Marcus Winters, Manhattan InstituteAugust 2003
Keith Gayler, Naomi Chudowsky, Nancy Kober, and Madlene Hamilton, Center on Education PolicyAugust 2003
Lowell C. Rose and Alec M. Gallup, Phi Delta Kappan and the Gallup OrganizationAugust 20, 2003
Partnership for 21st Century SkillsAugust 2003
With schools re-opening, daily attacks in the middle east, and the second anniversary of 9/11 hard upon us, teachers can expect another round of nonsense from experts who think it's more important to boost children's self-esteem and tolerance than to instruct them in the history of their own and other countries, the wellsprings of citizenship, and the price of defending freedom.Worse, th
Please note, this is not our April's Fools edition. Officials in Beaufort County, South Carolina have decided to institutionalize grade inflation by mandating that no student receive less than a 62 (out of 100) in the first semester of any class, so that students will not be prevented from passing the class if they improve in the second semester.
At a time of budget crunching, why would teacher unions, legislators, and state education officials turn down free money? Yet under pressure from these groups, that is exactly what Michigan's governor is about to do. Governor Jennifer Granholm has vowed to veto a bill that would enable a local Detroit businessman to donate $200 million to build 15 new charter schools in the Motor City.
Last fall, 52 percent of Florida voters supported a constitutional amendment that would cap class sizes in public schools throughout the state. Now, given the severe budget crunch and high cost of class-size reduction - more than $1 billion this year and next - Florida's State Board of Education has voted to join Governor Jeb Bush in an effort to roll back part of the amendment.
A new Ohio law removes the state's Department of Education from the charter school authorizing business and allows school districts, county education service centers, public universities AND qualified nonprofits to sponsor charter schools in the Buckeye State.
Andrew J. Wayne and Peter Youngs, Review of Educational Research Spring 2003, Vol. 73, No. 1, pp. 89-122
Though the phrase "don't know much about history" is now a clich?, we can't argue with the sentiments of this article in National Journal, which argues that the well-intentioned No Child Left Behind act is perversely marginalizing subjects like history.
Patrick Murphy, Michael DeArmond, and Kacey Guin, Education Policy Analysis ArchivesJuly 2003
Carol Ascher et al., Institute for Education and Social Policy2003
David A. Goslin, The Scarecrow Press, Inc.2003
When hizzoner Michael Bloomberg gained control of Gotham's crippled school system, many had high hopes. Perhaps at last New York City would muster the strength to free itself from the establishment monopoly over education reform, curriculum, and pedagogy--and the innumerable underperforming schools it has created.
On January 8, Indiana became one of five states singled out by the U.S. Department of Education for early approval of its No Child Left Behind accountability plan. These states were depicted as leaders that had set aside excuses and committed themselves to educating all students.
The American Federation of Teachers is out with the 2002 edition of its Survey and Analysis of Teacher Salary Trends, and this year's report is even cheekier than usual. Acknowledging that, according to the union's own data, "average teacher salaries improved faster than inflation for the fourth time in five years," the authors demand yet more money for teacher pay.
In June, Gadfly voiced some skepticism when the Department of Education announced with great fanfare that it had approved the NCLB accountability plans of all fifty states, as well as the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. We noted that the "victory" was at best pyrrhic, since many states cut corners to comply and at least one (Iowa) was approved despite lacking state standards.
