Displaying 16861-16890 of 17758 results
Commentary
10.22.2002

PTA fights for relevance, membership

A long article in Sunday's Los Angeles Times describes the Parent-Teacher Association's struggle to survive declining membership and increasing demands on parents' time and energy.

Commentary
10.22.2002

Rookie superintendents share their battle stories

During the 2001-2001 school year, nearly one-fifth of the nation's superintendents were newcomers to this demanding role. The American Association of School Administrators contacted six of these rookies with diverse backgrounds and asked each to keep a journal of his or her experiences as a first-year superintendent.

Commentary
10.22.2002

New York City's poorest students receive the least Title I money

An unintended consequence of a 1994 rule governing Title I - the largest federal education aid program - is that New York City's poorest boroughs receive far less money per disadvantaged student than other boroughs with lesser concentrations of poor kids.

Commentary
10.22.2002

California's education awards cancelled for this year

California's budget crisis has dried up funds for the state's highly touted education awards program, which will not be distributed this academic year, Governor Gray Davis's administration announced last week.

Commentary
10.22.2002

Massachusetts approves controversial history guidelines

This week, the Massachusetts' Board of Education unanimously approved new K-12 history standards despite criticism that the guidelines were rushed and weighted more heavily toward facts than concepts. The state maintains that the public had ample time to offer input, as the standards' two-year development included numerous meetings with teachers and community groups.

Commentary
10.17.2002

The OERI bill: a marginal improvement

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

The Gadfly has buzzed repeatedly about pending legislation to reorganize the federal government's education research, statistics, assessment and evaluation functions. This week, the U.S. Senate put the finishing legislative touches on H.R.

Commentary
10.17.2002

California charter schools create accreditation system

Earlier this week, the California Network of Educational Charters (CANEC) unveiled a new accreditation program in an attempt to introduce a measure of self-evaluation and -regulation among the network's 300 charter schools.

Commentary
10.17.2002

Charter schools and urban education

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Everyone agrees that the weak performance of U.S. urban education poses a national crisis. Far too many low income and minority youngsters attend bad schools where they learn too little, are sometimes in danger and are understandably inclined to drop out.Yet not everyone appreciates the contribution that charter schools can make to easing the urban-education crisis. To the contrary.

Commentary
10.17.2002

Edison explains its finances

I write to clarify four issues regarding Edison Schools in a recent Gadfly article written by Allison Cole, "Edison's Year has a Rocky Start" [see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=38#546]:

Commentary
10.17.2002

"Fresh" offerings from the anti-reform camp

The current issue of Phi Delta Kappan contains both a screed by the infamous Alfie Kohn on the subject of corporate involvement in education and the latest of Gerald Bracey's annual rants about who he likes and who he doesn't like in American education. Just about everyone who wants to boost standards or foster choice manages to land in the latter category.

Commentary
10.17.2002

More implementation challenges for the No Child Left Behind Act

A long article by Diana Schemo in Monday's New York Times outlined some of the ways in which the No Child Left Behind Act is being weakened or skirted by federal, state, and local officials. Several states are moving to ease their standards for academic proficiency to ensure that more children are able to reach them.

Commentary
10.17.2002

9/11 lessons for educators

Writing this time in Educational Leadership, Diane Ravitch offers seven lessons for educators in the aftermath of September 11th. The first of these: it's okay to be patriotic.

Commentary
10.9.2002

Schools try out report cards based on state academic standards

While the Manhattan Institute survey described above presents discouraging evidence that many teachers have not bought into standards-based reform, there are some points of light out there. In Illinois, two elementary schools are testing new report cards that replace A's, B's, and C's with indications of whether the student exceeds, meets, or has not met certain state academic standards.