The Supreme Court's Zelman ruling is plainly good for poor children in Cleveland. It also proves beyond dispute that policymakers can, if they want to, craft a school-voucher program that will pass (federal) constitutional muster. Somewhere in America, there are bound to be a few legislators who had been wavering on the voucher issue who will now lend it their support.
After selling Netscape for $700 million, former president and CEO Jim Barksdale and his wife Sally pledged $100 million to help children in Mississippi learn to read.
Last weekend, two dozen accomplished men and women-mid-career professionals from outside the education establishment-spent a weekend in boot camp training to become superintendents of urban school districts in a program aimed at funneling highly talented people into those key roles.
Many in the academic world don't like private schools because they believe that society has a duty to develop citizens who are fully autonomous, and they embrace the idea of our nation's public schools preparing students to reflect critically on the traditions they are taught by their parents.
After decades of often animated conjecture and debate, the Supreme Court concluded in Zelman that Cleveland's publicly-funded voucher program is constitutional. The Court's long-awaited decision is good news for choice advocates in general and thousands of low-income Cleveland school children in particular.
William Lowe Boyd, Debra Hare and Joe Nathan, Center for School Change, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs, University of MinnesotaMay 2002
Bryan C. Hassel, Progressive Policy InstituteMay 29, 2002
Releasing a new report on teacher quality, Education Secretary Rod Paige last week called upon states to radically transform their teacher certification systems by raising standards while lowering the barriers that deter many qualified candidates from entering the public-school classroom. States and universities need to focus on bringing "smart teachers with solid content knowledge" into U.S.
North Carolina, Texas, New York, Massachusetts, and Arizona have America's best testing programs, according to Testing the Testers 2002, a new report from the Princeton Review.
American parents are famously content with their own children's schools even while deploring the state of schools in general. Many have speculated on why this is so. The likeliest explanation, I believe, is that parents have an emotional need to believe that they're providing well for their kids and have made suitable educational arrangements for them.
States may find it tempting to take over failing school systems, but their track record in turning those districts around is mixed. According to the Education Commission of the States, 10 states have intervened in 49 school districts since the late 1980s.
The Florida "exit voucher" program that allows students in failing public schools to transfer to private schools at public expense will expand this year. Last week, 10 Sunshine State schools received their second F rating in four years, which makes their pupils-roughly 8,900 in all-eligible for the voucher program.
A new Heritage Foundation Backgrounder contains the findings of a 2001 survey that looked at how members of Congress practice school choice. (A similar survey was conducted in 2000.) It turns out that forty-seven percent of House members and fifty-one percent of senators have children who attend or have attended private schools-percentages far higher than those of the general populace.
Berkeley linguist John McWhorter has made his name in policy circles by arguing, among other things, that black students do poorly in school due to a strain of anti-intellectualism in African American culture that is a by-product of racism.
Russlyn Ali, The Education Trust-WestApril 2002
edited by Williamson M. Evers, Lance T. Izumi and Pamela A. Riley, Hoover Institution and Pacific Research Institute, 2001
What does it take to be a successful principal? In the 1980s, "effective schools" research introduced the idea of instructional leadership.
Michael W. Kirst, Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of EducationMay 2002
Office of Special Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education2001
Frederick Hess, National School Boards Association2002
While the debate over school choice tends to focus on things like whether vouchers weaken public schools by draining away state funds or creaming the best students, most such contentions can be refuted by evidence.
Dozens of times in recent weeks, people have asked what I expect will happen to Edison Schools, formerly known as the Edison Project, considering the parlous state of the company's stock price, other signs of financial woe, the gnarly situation in Philadelphia, and the recent separation of Edison from one of its first schools (Boston's Renaissance charter school).No doubt I get asked thi
Katrina Bulkley and Jennifer Fisler, Consortium for Policy Research in EducationApril 2002
