A Sum Greater Than the Parts: What States Can Teach Each Other About Charter Schooling
Sara Mead and Andrew J. RotherhamEducation SectorSeptember 2007
Sara Mead and Andrew J. RotherhamEducation SectorSeptember 2007
Intercollegiate Studies Institute, American Civic Literacy ProgramSeptember 18, 2007
Carl F. Kaestle and Alyssa E. Lodewick, edsUniversity Press of Kansas2007
No Child Left Behind made many promises. One of the most important of them being a pledge to Mr. and Mrs. Smith that they would get an annual snapshot of how their little Susie is doing in school.
New Baltimore schools CEO Andres Alonso is already in trouble. He wants to require teachers to spend one, weekly 45-minute period engaged in collaborative planning with their colleagues. And for that, the city teachers union has gone on the attack, scheduling a no-confidence vote on the CEO. Upon hearing that the union planned such a vote, a perplexed Alonso asked, "Why?
Negar Azimi's New York Times Magazine piece about Teach For America might be new, but her criticisms of the program are not. Take, for example, the idea that TFA is for college graduates a "résumé-burnishing pit stop before moving on to bigger things." That may be partly true--but so what?
In Washington, D.C., school success is measured by the most basic of yardsticks. This year, for example, all 146 schools in the District opened on time, and almost all of them had the supplies they needed.
Bob Herbert can usually be counted on to dispense columns that are either off-base or banal. His latest piece is certainly banal (check out the title); but it's none too credible, either, because Herbert is calling for a "wholesale transformation of the public school system" that, were some politician to actually advance it, he, yes he, Herbert, would surely denounce.
We know that schools and school systems share a lot in common with businesses. Do they also resemble nations?
Gadfly now reads--courtesy of the Columbus Dispatch, a public-records request, and the Ohio Alliance of Public Charter Schools--that indeed Attorney General Marc Dann was doing the teacher union's bidding when he (a) settled out of court an ill-conceived NEA lawsuit against charter schools (that he likely would have won if it had gone to trial) and (b) tackled low-p
Robin J. Lake, Progressive Policy InstituteSeptember 2004
Bryan C. Hassel, Progressive Policy InstituteSeptember 21, 2004
Cheri Pierson Yecke, Ph.D., Center of the American ExperimentSeptember 22, 2004
The Mad, Mad World of Textbook Adoption, released today by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, is a splendid survey of what's wrong with textbooks today and how they went awry. The main problem besetting textbooks, we know, is their quality.
As any education researcher will tell you, conducting a "scientific" study of educational programs or practices is difficult at best, primarily because so many factors contribute to pupil achievement, including students' previous knowledge, teacher quality, the degree of parental and community support, etc.
Caroline Hoxby recaps the Great Charter Debate (or should we call it Ambush?) of 2004 in the Wall Street Journal this week.
The New York Times this week featured a column by Arthur Levine (often a sensible fellow, despite being president of Teachers College) outlining a "third way" on social promotion. Levine contends that "neither social promotion nor holding back students works. Leaving students back increases their dropout rate. . . .
You've watched Rotherham and Finn duke it out over the Bush administration's record on education. So let's hear from the administration, shall we? This week, the White House released a new "policy book" detailing its education successes and pointing toward future plans.
The British House of Commons education committee recently recommended greater flexibility in teacher pay as a way to combat specific teacher shortages. In particular, they recommend that "super teachers" be given bonuses for working in tough schools, and that schools that face persistent recruiting problems should be able to pay more to entice new teachers.
Last week, Gadfly editorialized that "Putting most of the available energy, political capital, brain power and money into 'helping' districts engage in chartering rather than devoting those (limited) assets to advancing the frontier of independent charter schools: removing caps on their numbers and enrollments, creating
Statewide textbook adoption, the process by which 21 states dictate the textbooks that schools and districts can use, is fundamentally flawed. It distorts the market, entices extremist groups to hijack the curriculum, enriches the textbook cartel, and papers the land with mediocre instructional materials that cannot fulfill their important education mission. Tinkering with it won't set it right, concludes this latest Fordham Institute report. Legislators and governors in adoption states should eliminate the process, letting individual schools, individual districts, or even individual teachers choose their own textbooks.
Sylvia A. Allegretto, Sean P. Corcoran and Lawrence Mishel Economic Policy Institute 2004
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education StatisticsSeptember 2004
American Legislative Exchange Council, Andrew T. LeFevreSeptember 22, 2004
Have thoughts you'd like to share with us? Send them to letters @edexcellence.net. And watch this space for more From our Readers as we hear more from you.
Ben Wildavsky, Sourcebooks, Inc.September 2004
How do you keep your revolutionary edge if you become part of the establishment?
Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson has been in the spotlight more than once this year for daring to support initiatives like charter schools, the suspension of teacher pay and class-size initiatives, and the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) graduation requirement.
Salon.com offers an against-the-grain article purporting to show that the accepted wisdom about college professors-that they're overwhelmingly liberal and generally vote Democrat-is overstated. This would be fascinating if true, but the piece contradicts itself.
The Broad Foundation announced this week that the Garden Grove Unified School District in Orange County, CA is the winner of its 2004 urban prize for education - the largest and most prestigious such award in public education. Each year, the Foundation awards $1 million in college scholarships to the most outstanding urban school districts in the nation.