Last week, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce took up the Ready to Teach Act (H.R. 2211), the first of any number of bills that will feed into reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. This one seeks to align teacher-training programs with the high standards for accountability and results mandated by No Child Left Behind.
In recent weeks, opportunistic charter school adversaries have been having a field day - using state budget crunches and low test scores to fuel the anti-charter fire. In Massachusetts, for example, the state Senate passed a three-year moratorium on the creation or expansion of charter schools, claiming that they are "draining" limited funds from the public school system.
The Milken Family Foundation has created a new (electronic) newsletter tied to its pathbreaking Teacher Advancement Program, but also addressing broader issues of teacher quality. The inaugural issue contains an interesting overview of teacher "pay for performance": where it's been tried, what's happened, what can be learned.
Ruth Curran Neild, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of EducationApril 11, 2003
American Association of School Administrators and National Association of State Boards of EducationApril, 2003
Kathryn McDermott et. al., MassINC2003
Parent Leadership Associates2003
Patte Barth, The Education TrustWinter 2003Education Watch: Achievement, Attainment, and Opportunity from Elementary School Through CollegeThe Education TrustWinter 2003
The U.S. Department of Education announced on Tuesday that, because Georgia is not administering end-of-course tests this year, it has the dubious honor of being the first state to have funding withheld for failure to comply with the 1994 amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).
Responding to President Bush's call to improve Head Start, the 38-year-old federal program designed to increase educational opportunities for low-income preschoolers, House Republicans introduced a reform plan designed to close the school "readiness gap" that exists between low-income youngsters and their more affluent peers when they begin kindergarten.
Jeff Jacoby, columnist for the Globe, uses - of all things - the Jayson Blair scandal to jump off to a pretty boisterous condemnation of teacher unions.
Standards and choice, say the authors of this very brief policy brief, should go hand-in-hand in raising educational achievement. Robert Holland and Dan Soifer of the Lexington Institute applaud Virginia schools for increasing the number of students who have passed the state's rigorous Standards of Learning (SOL) assessment tests.
Newsweek, playing catch-up to the influential if overrated college rankings in U.S. News & World Report, has a published the third edition of its list of the nation's 100 best public high schools, based only on rates of participation in AP and international baccalaureate classes.
Boston, like many school districts, faces a double whammy when it comes to teachers. Retention rates are low, with more than half of new teachers leaving the district or even the profession within three years. And more than half of all Boston teachers will soon be eligible for retirement.
Public schools in Oregon closed three weeks early this year and the Michigan legislature may allow that state's school systems to operate four days a week.
Stacey Bielick and Christopher Chapman, National Center for Education StatisticsMay 2003
Tom Toch, Beacon Press2003
Few deny that U.S. public schools and districts need better leaders than many of them now have - or that the pressure of NCLB's performance expectations plus the surge of retirements among principals and superintendents will inflame this need in the years ahead. But where to find such people? What to look for? How to prepare them? On what terms to employ them? This week, the Thomas B.
Andrew Sum and Paul Harrington, The Business RoundtableMay 2003
Christopher B. Swanson, The Urban InstituteMay 2003
After a five-year battle to replace Minnesota's disgraceful Profile of Learning standards with a more rigorous set of academic standards and accountability - a fight led by Governor Tim Pawlenty and education secretary Cheri Pearson Yecke-the state legislature finally reached a bipartisan agreement to repeal the standards minutes before the close of this year's session.
A recent article in the Sacramento Bee uncovered a questionable education finance plan in California dating back to 1979 that forces the state to provide extra money to schools that meet bare minimum requirements for carrying out state mandates.
As Checker says, it's true that we need better school leadership to improve American K-12 education. With a large percentage of U.S.
On Tuesday, union-backed (and incumbent) Los Angeles Board of Education member David Tokofsky defeated challenger Nellie Rios-Parra in a key runoff election that shifted the board's balance of power back to the union.
Last year, in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public money could cover tuition costs for children at private schools. Now, the Court is being asked to rule on whether tax dollars can cover scholarships, textbooks, and other types of aid for the study of religion in higher ed institutions.
Report of the National Commission on Writing in America's Schools and CollegesApril 2003
Sol Stern, Encounter BooksMay 2003
Alliance for Excellent EducationApril 2003
