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2001 Education Freedom Index
Jay P. Greene, Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan InstituteJanuary 2002
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Beyond Brick and Mortar: Cyber Charters Revolutionizing Education
Neal McCluskey, Center for Education ReformJanuary 2002
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Student Academic Achievement in Charter Schools: What We Know and Why We Know So Little
Gary Miron and Christopher Nelson, National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, Teachers College, Columbia UniversityDecember 2001
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Preschool as the next frontier for Bush and Kennedy
As they flew back to Washington earlier this month after celebrating their joint education bill, the No Child Left Behind Act, President Bush and Senator Edward M. Kennedy held an extended conversation about the need to boost early childhood education, and that conversation may soon lead to legislation, according to reporter Anne Kornblut of The Boston Globe.
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Is the GED equivalent to a high school diploma?
In an earlier report and Gadfly editorial-available at http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=75#1062-the Manhattan Institute's Jay Greene explained that official high school graduation rates published by the federal government understate the problem of dropouts because they treat the General Education Developm
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Who Says It's a Good School?
Important education insights sometimes arise from developments in other fields. This happened to me twice in recent weeks. Both episodes bear on results-based accountability, how it works, what can go awry-and what's wrong with the usual substitutes.First, a new study of hospital accreditation looked into whether it makes any difference for the quality of patient care.
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Better teachers in NYC: recruiting outsiders and retraining veterans
A New York Times article last week described how a young teacher in Brooklyn helped her students achieve test score improvements large enough to help get the school off the state's "registration review" list of failing schools.
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Enhancing Teacher Quality through Knowledge- and Skills-based Pay
Allan Odden, Carolyn Kelley, Herbert Heneman, and Anthony Milanowski, Consortium for Policy Research in Education, November 2001
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Tuition Tax Credits: A Model for School Choice
Lisa Graham Keegan, National Center for Policy Analysis, December 18, 2001
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Evaluating the Accelerated Schools Approach: A Look at Early Implementation and Impacts on Student Achievement in Eight Elementary Schools
Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, December 2001
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From TAAS To TAKS: A Progress Report on New Assessment for Texas Public Schools
Chris Patterson, Texas Public Policy Foundation, January 2002
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Building Civic Capacity: The Politics of Reforming Urban Schools
Clarence Stone, Jeffrey Henig, Bryan Jones and Carol Pierannunzi, 2001
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The New York Times debates reading methods
A careful reader of The New York Times would by now be very confused about the state of reading research. In the past few weeks, three different writers in the newspaper have offered differing interpretations of the issue.
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Districts to abandon reduced class sizes in California
Until this year, virtually all school districts in California participated in the state's class size reduction program, with the state footing most of the cost.
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Milwaukee public schools respond to competition
"Years of vouchers and competition-based reforms mean it's no longer a novelty to see MPS [Milwaukee Public Schools] promoting schools the way Procter & Gamble sells Tide," writes Sam Schulhofer-Wohl in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, but "the public school system's promotional efforts are reaching newly feverish heights this winter" with free chili dinners at MPS open houses, radio
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Ten Myths about School Choice: Answering the Campaign against School Vouchers
Howard Fuller and Kaleem Caire, National Center for Policy Analysis 2001
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Absence Unexcused: Ending Teacher Shortages in High-Need Areas
Beatriz Chu Clewell and Ana Maria Villegas, The Urban Institute December 2001
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Improving Student Achievement in Arizona: A Call to Action
Governor's Task Force on Efficiency and Accountability in K-12 Education December 18, 2001
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No Child Left Behind: the untold story
"Phonics and testing, we're meant to believe, are an intensive therapy set to turn around laggard schools," writes Stephen Metcalf in The Nation, "But administrators, teachers, parents and children know better." The real story behind President Bush's education plan, says Metcalf, is that "The big players now at the education table, some with a considerable financial stake in the new regi
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Reform-minded philanthropists need a strategy for education reform
Education giving is also taking a hit as philanthropists' bank accounts shrink and some redirect their resources toward fighting terrorism and supporting domestic relief efforts in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.
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State budgets for education to shrink in lean economic times
The faltering U.S. economy has put an end to a decade of budgetary good times for schools, with the recession opening a $40 billion hole in many states' general funds on which schools rely heavily, reports Daniel Wood in The Christian Science Monitor. Among the hardest-hit states are New York, Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, and California, where Gov.
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Double Standard in Voucher Research
As Supreme Court justices weigh the constitutionality of Cleveland's voucher program in the next few months, their assessment of the benefits of school choice is apt to influence their decision.
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Using information to enhance the bottom line of schools
Data warehousing, data-driven decision making, or business intelligence - whatever its name, it's the latest thing for managing school systems, according to a short article in this Sunday's Education Life supplement to The New York Times.
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Teacher Turnover and Teacher Shortages: An Organizational Analysis
Richard M. Ingersoll, American Educational Research Journal, Fall 2001
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The Heart of a High School: One Community's Effort to Transform Urban Education
Holly Holland and Kelly Mazzoli, 2001
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Not a ParodyWhy education research struggles for respect
Members of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) who attend the organization's annual meeting in 2002 are invited to attend a professional development course (for only $70!) that will train them to engage "with poetic representation of data as a way of focusing, interpreting, clarifying, and communicating the results of qualitative research," according to a note in the December 2
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How not to secure a qualified teacher for every classroom
While the testing and reading provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act have been monopolizing the spotlight, the requirement that all teachers in core academic subjects be fully qualified within four years is starting to attract its share of unfriendly attention.