Higher Education Funding - International Comparisons
Department for Education and Skills, United KingdomFebruary 2004
Department for Education and Skills, United KingdomFebruary 2004
The federal budget process is something of a kabuki drama, with affected special interests acting out their ritualized poor-mouthing on cue. This is especially the case for Fiscal 2005, in which the White House gave the Department of Education a $1.7 billion increase in a very tight fiscal environment.
Former IBM CEO Lou Gerstner once said, "Never confuse activity with results." New York City Deputy Schools Chancellor Diana Lam could do well to learn that lesson. Unfortunately, rather than judging schools by results, Lam and her team have focused on mandating superficial activity for teachers - apparently assuming that teachers, left to their own devices, could never do right by students.
Jake Bogdanovich, an Ohio senior randomly chosen to take a standardized test to gauge his district's progress toward meeting the goals of a school reform program, decided to engage in a little sabotage. As he observed, no "scholarship opportunities" were connected to the test, nor would its outcome be reflected on his report card.
In an editorial, USA Today notes that the 15,000 National Merit Scholars are not just chosen on the basis of, well, merit, but also geography. That is, scholarships are apportioned to each state based on the number of graduating seniors in that state relative to the number nationwide.
Education and political circles are buzzing with talk of the unfair burdens that Congress has allegedly heaped upon states and districts via the No Child Left Behind Act.
This week, California Education Secretary Richard Riordan introduced a plan that would cede control over a school's administration and budget to its principal, taking it away from the central office administration. A hearty thumbs-up for this fine proposal, but now we learn that some principals would just as soon have the buck stop with someone else.
Last week, we reported that the Utah House Education Committee sent a bill to the floor barring state schools from "any further participation in the No Child Left Behind Act." (See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=133#1656 for background info.) Now it seems that legislators have decided that, while they
Jack Jennings, Center on Education PolicyJanuary 2003
Brian Stecher and Sheila Nataraj Kirby, editorsRAND Education2004
Over the course of the past several years, education policy makers have increasingly looked to non-traditional education reforms as means both of correcting traditional public education inequities and of improving the state of education overall. In Florida, one of the first states to implement statewide accountability and reform measures, the results have been encouraging.
We're all for civics in our schools but this version is outrageous. Next week, schools in the two big districts in the Maryland suburbs of D.C., Montgomery and Prince George's counties, will close two hours early so their students and teachers can attend a rally in the state capital to protest planned cuts in the state education budget.
The Georgia Performance Standards, the new curriculum proposed by the Department of Education for the public schools of Georgia, is a giant step forward for students and teachers in the Peachtree State.
Two articles put us in mind of the old but trusty clich??, it's all about the kids. In the Washington Post, Bruce Fuller of UC-Berkeley offers a few suggestions for fixes to No Child Left Behind, some of which strike us as sensible.
Since the adoption of No Child Left Behind two years ago, several states have threatened to reject federal Title I money so they can sidestep the new law's accountability provisions.
Co-published by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and AccountabilityWorks, with support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, this report looks at six elements of K-12 accountability systems in 30 different states. Each state is rated on standards, test content, alignment of tests to standards, test rigor, testing trustworthiness and openness, and accountability policies. The major conclusion: while some states have the basis of a sophisticated and rigorous accountability system in place, no state has every element of a serious standards-based education reform package in place. And few states are as open to evaluation as they ought to be.
Elizabeth G. Hill, Legislative Analyst???s OfficeJanuary 2004
The poet Longfellow once wrote, "How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams with its illusions, aspirations, dreams!" And though George Bernard Shaw would respond that youth is wasted on the young, youthful idealism remains a mainstay of our culture and one of the most precious things to be guarded and nurtured by education.
The Institute for Justice has a nifty new website on school choice with links to legal briefs, fact sheets, and talking points about the topic. A handy resource for researchers, journalists, and activists. Check it out at http://www.ij.org/cases/school/.
Though testing opponents have made some gains in the court of public opinion, they continue to strike out in the real courts. This week, the Massachusetts Supreme Court unanimously rejected a claim by several Bay State students that the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System is unconstitutional.
There are at least three possible responses to pressure on teachers to get students up to par on state standardized tests. One is to do the job. Another is to take a pass, not get the job done, and criticize the test. A third is to cheat. Generally, we would characterize these responses, respectively, as the correct response, passing the buck, and unethical.
Education leaders in Georgia and Minnesota are working to revise their state standards for U.S. and world history. And, in both states, a fierce debate has ensued.
Sixteen long years ago, I wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education that "consumers need a 'no-frills university' to turn the higher-education marketplace upside down." I lamented, "It costs $20,000 to attend some of the nation's more illustrious colleges this year, prices having risen an average of 9 percent over last year.
This brochure contains profiles of the winners of the second annual Thomas B. Fordham Foundation Prizes for Excellence in Education. The 2004 prize for Valor is awarded to Howard Fuller, and the 2004 prize for Distinguished Scholarship is awarded to Eric Hanushek.
On Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, Gary Orfield and the Harvard Civil Rights Project released a study concluding--just like last year's report, and the one the year before that--that school segregation is on the rise. According to the authors, their 'new' work "shows that U.S. schools are becoming more segregated in all regions for both African American and Latino students.
The Philanthropy RoundtableJanuary 2004
Kim K. Metcalf, Stephen D. West, Natalie A. Legan, Kelli M. Paul and William J. BooneIndiana University School of EducationDecember 2003
Christopher T. Cross, Teachers College PressDecember 2003
A Missouri circuit court judge last week ruled that a Cass County school district violated state law when it awarded "commitment" bonuses to a handful of teachers who agreed to sign two-year contracts.