A teacher takes Post education columnist Jay Mathews to task for his rankings of America's best public schools, which he bases on the number of students within a school who take Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) classes.
This new report from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation includes the voices of 29 political leaders, education practitioners, and cultural analysts who discuss what schools should teach about U.S. history, American ideals, and American civic life in the wake of 9/11, the war on terror, and the liberation of Iraq.
This new report from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation consists of penetrating critiques by renegade social studies educators who fault the regnant teaching methods and curricular ideas of their field and suggest how it can be reformed. While nearly everyone recognizes that American students don't know much about history and civics, these analysts probe the causes of this ignorance-and lay primary responsibility at the feet of the social studies 'establishment' to which they belong.
A good, well-organized social studies curriculum seeks to teach students the key events, issues, and people in America's past, how our government works, our rights and responsibilities as citizens, and how our predecessors fought to defend democracy. How can parents tell whether their children are getting such a curriculum in school?one that is rich in historical content and provides a solid base for future learning? The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation suggests asking teachers and principals these six questions on back to school night.
United States General Accounting OfficeJuly 2003
Jane K. Doty, Gregory N. Cameron, and Mary Lee Barton, Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL)2003
Marvin Kosters and Brent Mast, American Enterprise Institute Press2003
Nelson Smith, Progressive Policy InstituteJuly 9, 2003
Gadfly readers know that teacher certification is no guarantee of teacher effectiveness. So our interest was piqued by a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed that spotlights a summer school program run largely by students with no formal education training.
First, there was the Bush administration's proposal to reform Head Start. [See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=10#350.] That proved too strong for the House, which watered the measure down.
If you're planning some summer reading, allow us to suggest "An Impossible Job?
Gadfly is pleased to note that Phoebe Cottingham has been named commissioner of the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance at the Department of Education (within the new Institute for Education Sciences that replaced the old Office of Educational Research and Improvement).
With states aflutter over how to meet NCLB's mandate that they must guarantee a "highly qualified teacher in every classroom," two recent reports are illuminating.Last month, Education Secretary Rod Paige issued his second annual report on teacher quality ("Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge" or
Richard P. Phelps, with a foreword by Herbert J. Walberg and a preface by J.E. Stone, Transaction Publishers2003
Erika Frankenberg and Chungmei Lee, The Civil Rights Project, Harvard UniversityJuly 2003
Gail Jones, Brett Jones, and Tracy Hargrove, Rowman and Littlefield2003
Former Los Angeles school board president Caprice Young, who warmed the hearts of education reformers during her four years in office and accomplished more than anyone expected with that sprawling, balky school system, has agreed to head a newly formed organization that will support the 400+ charter schools in California and help others get started.
James Tooley has spent years documenting how private education can work wonders for low-income students in international settings.
Florida's Opportunity Scholarship program, which lets students in persistently failing schools use a publicly funded voucher at the school of their choice, is doubling in size as more and more families in the (so far) nine failing Florida schools become aware of their options.
Gadfly tries not to read the political tea leaves, preferring a just-the-facts approach. But when the senior Senator from California, Democratic impresario, and teachers' union darling Dianne Feinstein comes out in favor of private school vouchers, something important is going on. Feinstein has emerged as a potential swing vote in the Senate, where foes of the D.C.
Across the country, art and music programs in schools are being squeezed by contracting budgets and the demands of No Child Left Behind, which places the curricular focus on reading and math. Devotees of these programs are fighting back with letter-writing campaigns and a website, http://www.supportmusic.com/index-home.html.
With encouragement from the Council of Great City Schools and various dispensations and special funding from the powers that be at NAEP, a handful of America's big-city school systems are doing something gutsy and important: administering the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests to representative samples of their 4th and 8th graders and allowing the results to be reported just as i
Those who would change the teaching profession by instituting pay incentives tied to performance can learn some things about teacher attitudes toward the issue from the latest Public Agenda study, Stand By Me. Here, I'd like to focus on what teachers told us was a glaring flaw in the public schools and what they would support to solve it.
We don't always agree with every single thing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has to say about education but they're growing wiser with age, particularly when it comes to charter (and private) schools.
Jay P. Greene, Greg Forster, and Marcus A. Winters, Manhattan InstituteJuly 2003
Krista KaferThe Heritage FoundationMay 2003
National Center for Education StatisticsJuly 2003
Educational Testing ServiceMay 2003
