As reported in Gadfly several weeks ago, Teach for America has feared for some time that it would be wounded by the drastic funding cuts for the national service program AmeriCorps.
By an overwhelming margin, the U.S. House of Representatives has raised the stakes on teacher preparation. The Ready to Teach Act, passed last week by a 404-17 vote, would make the passage rate of graduates of teacher training colleges a factor in awarding federal dollars to those institutions.
In a decision the Las Vegas Review-Journal called "stunning," Nevada's highest court overturned a referendum twice passed by state voters that requires a supermajority of legislators to approve new tax increases. The basis: a desire to increase school funding.
Gadfly is generally unsympathetic to unexcused absences. But this time we'll make an exception. Last week, the House Government Reform committee passed a bill authorizing education vouchers in the nation's capital on a close-to-party-line vote of 22-21. Only the absence of opponent Representative Major Owens (D-N.Y.) saved the bill from being stalled in committee by a tie, which D.C.
This is the second of the annual teacher quality reports that the Secretary of Education is required by No Child Left Behind to submit to Congress. Like last year's, the news in this report is mixed. Thirty-five states have linked their teacher certification requirements to student content standards; six are in the process of doing so.
"We expect," wrote Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, on behalf of a 5-4 Supreme Court majority okaying race-based affirmative action in the recent Michigan cases, "that 25 years from now the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today." [For Gadfly's coverage, see h
It's a fairly typical slow-news-day article about American students' appalling lack of civic and historical knowledge. (The article opens with a Mississippi state senator quizzing local high school seniors on the three unalienable rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence.
International Reading Association2003
For more than 30 years, I've been - or at least, have tried to be - an agitator. The classroom has been my bailiwick, unsuspecting and complacent students my target. I am the sort of teacher who aims less to please than to annoy, to stir things up, to agitate.
According to the California state board of education's definition of a "persistently dangerous" school, there are no persistently dangerous schools in the state.
The driving premise behind this Annenberg funded report is this: Districts need help in meeting the student achievement goals now being established by state and federal policies.
It's hardly news to say that students complain about school being boring. But it ought to give us pause that such a wide and varied range of students report, contemptuously, that America's high schools are almost uniformly incapable of sparking their intellectual interest.
As the number of charter schools has grown across the country, so has the number of bureaucratic requirements and red tape surrounding charter school operation.
In case you were wondering, the National Education Association has decided that it opposes the No Child Left Behind Act. Meeting in New Orleans this week, union members approved a plan to lobby Congress to drop or amend major portions of the law, allow states control over when its accountability measures will - if ever - take effect, and provide new federal funding for its implementation.
Richard Fry, Pew Hispanic CenterJune 2003
The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation2003
One of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg's grand campaign promises was a pledge to reform bilingual education.
James Tooley and Pauline Dixon, Centre for British TeachersMay 2003
Last week the Washington Post ran a two-part series (by Justin Blum and Jay Mathews) on the state of D.C. charter schools. It's a good summary of how the schools are doing compared to traditional public schools (mixed) and the effect they're having on the D.C. school system (scant).
Special ed reform is in the air. The House has passed and the Senate has introduced bills to overhaul the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
While you're right that more than 80 percent of Americans support graduation requirements in theory [see "Resist urge to 'refine' graduation testing"], when faced with the reality of the impact on their communities and children, support will inevitably drop.
In what may prove a classic case of unintended consequences, California school districts, in a supposed effort to raise standards, are launching "No-D" grading policies, which require students to earn a C or better to pass a course.
Senator Lamar Alexander's excellent bill to create national academies to strengthen education in civics and history for both teachers and high school students has sailed through the Senate.
Color us na??ve, but it seems like the stars may be aligning for a serious test of school vouchers in the District of Columbia. Tuesday, the House Government Reform Committee held hearings on a bill (H.R. 2556) that would provide private school tuition scholarships of up to $7,500 to low-income children in the nation's capital. Testifying in support were Secretary of Education Rod Paige, D.C.
It happens that the Supreme Court's decision in two affirmative action cases came out just days after the release of the latest reading results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The latter show clearly that America still faces a wide education achievement gap between white and minority students.
Margaret E. Raymond, CREDO, Hoover Institution at Stanford UniversityMay 2003
