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The battle over Success for All
Is Success for All (SFA) the leading example of evidence-based education in America or is it all smoke and mirrors?
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On school leaders and auditors
That many of our vast public school systems are all but ungovernable doesn't stop the powers that be from searching far and wide for messiah-like figures to lead them. Philadelphia's latest quest for the perfect executive led the City of Brotherly Love to select Paul Vallas, who rides in from Chicago to see whether he can lead another troubled urban system out of educational perdition.
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Reviving civic education in America
Writing in the summer 2002 issue of Manhattan Institute's City Journal, California State University classics scholar Victor Davis Hanson examines the decline of civic education in America, tracing much of it to the degradation of history and the triumph of multiculturalism and relativism, and suggests (in fairly general terms) what would be needed to revive it.
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Sticking up for charter schools
In an editorial in last week's Gadfly, Checker Finn blasted the AFT's new report "Do Charter Schools Measure Up?" A point-by-point refutation of the key conclusions of the AFT's study will be posted later today by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers at
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New poll shows most blacks support school choice
Nearly two thirds of blacks would enroll their children in a charter or private school if given the chance, according to a poll by the Black America's Political Action Committee. Conducted during the week before the Zelman decision, the poll also showed that the majority of blacks surveyed gave public schools a "C" grade or lower when asked to evaluate their condition.
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Creating a test that doesn't offend anyone, anywhere, anytime
With rewards and punishments now tied to test scores, states can't afford to risk complaints about bias in their test questions, so sensitivity guidelines adopted in the 1960s to address the "culturally lopsided" view of America presented in the reading passages of standardized tests have now stretched to cover "almost everyone in almost every situation." Testing companies avoid mentioning anyt
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Defining a knowledge base for teachers
In "A Knowledge Base for the Teaching Profession: What Would It Look Like and How Can We Get One?" James Hiebert, Ronald Gallimore and James Stigler acknowledge that the U.S. teaching profession does not draw heavily upon a shared base of solid "craft knowledge" grounded in the analysis and communication of what effective teachers have learned. "Practitioner knowledge," they call it.
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Defining educational accountability
"Making School Reform Work" is the slightly misleading title of an essay by Checker Finn on the subject of educational accountability in the summer 2002 issue of The Public Interest. It distinguishes three distinct forms of accountability and seeks to evaluate them.
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Finding new leaders from the suburbs for failing schools
Most failing schools desperately need new principals, but talented leaders are in short supply. Maryland superintendent Nancy Grasmick has inaugurated an effort to bring well-regarded principals from suburban districts to lead failing schools in inner city Baltimore.
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A guide to legal obligations in serving disabled students
In "Serving Students With Disabilities in Charter Schools: Legal Obligations and Policy Options," Paul T. O'Neill, Richard J.
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Vouchers could reduce residential segregation by income
If private school vouchers are offered to all parents living in poor districts (as opposed to being offered only to low-income families), this would lessen income segregation across school districts. That's because many families presently stretch their budgets to pay inflated housing prices in good public school districts.
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Shooting for the Sun: The Message of Middle School Reform (Selected Remarks of M. Hayes Mizell)
The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation2002
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Developments in School Finance 1999-2000
William J. Fowler Jr., ed., National Center for Education StatisticsJuly 2002
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The shame of the AFT
Yesterday brought the official release of a much-hyped and professionally leaked "study" of U.S. charter schools by the American Federation of Teachers, timed to coincide with the union's convention in Las Vegas. In a word, it reeks.It reeks of error, distortion and untruth about charter schools, how they're working, what effects they're having, what we know about them.
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Zelman: The Triumph of Pluribus over Unum?
It is generally agreed that the Supreme Court's decision in the Zelman case issued on June 27 approving the constitutionality of vouchers that would enable parents to receive tax funds to pay tuition to send their children to religious schools as well as to other private and public schools is a landmark change in American constitutional and educational history.
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Helping failing schools is easier said than done
State accountability systems are shining a harsh spotlight on failing schools, and education officials in several states are striving to help those schools turn around.
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Higher Pay for Hard-to-Staff Schools: The Case for Financial Incentives
This fifty-page paper by Cynthia Prince, issues director at the American Association of School Administrators, contends that "offering financial incentives to teachers willing to take on more challenging assignments is essential if we are to staff every school with highly qualified teachers....Changing the way that teachers are paid is critical if we are to attract and hold teachers in the scho
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New wrinkles in the game of college admissions
Getting the incentives right in the high-stakes game of college admissions is always a challenge, but two recent changes-one in the SAT's disability policy, the other in the admissions system of the University of California-are raising eyebrows.
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Edison test score results are in the eye of the beholder
Supporters and opponents of Edison Schools frequently butt heads over whether Edison-run schools are performing better than similar schools in the same districts.
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An open letter to the president of Harvard
Readers with a stomach for more commentary from the Gadfly's Checker Finn may want to peruse "An Open Letter to Lawrence H. Summers," which reflects upon Summers' first year as president of Harvard.
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Vouchers promote integration, not segregation
In an op-ed published by The Wall Street Journal, Jay Greene warns voucher supporters that the teachers unions, the Harvard Civil Rights Project and others, are already sharpening their knives to attack vouchers on a different constitutional front-the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause-by arguing that vouchers increase segregation.
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Model Contractor Standards & State Responsibilities for State Testing Standards
S.E. Phillips and Theodor Rebarber, AccountabilityWorks and the Education Leaders CouncilJune 2002
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Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read, Kindergarten through Grade 3
The Partnership for ReadingSeptember 2001
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Block scheduling lowers test scores
Block scheduling caused the test scores of high school students in Iowa to drop, according to a new study by Iowa State University. The popular reform, which ordinarily divides the school day into four 80-to-90 minute classes instead of the traditional schedule of eight classes of 45-to-50 minutes each, led to "markedly lower" ACT scores.
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State Innovation Priorities for State Testing Programs
John W. Oswald and Theodor Rebarber, AccountabilityWorks and the Education Leaders CouncilJune 2002
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