In 1999, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation published a study by Dan Goldhaber (of the Urban Institute) and Dominic Brewer (of RAND) that found that students of teachers with emergency credentials do no worse than students whose teachers have standard teaching credentials.
Most children who live in the Hollywood Hills go to private schools, but a small group of parents from that affluent Los Angeles neighborhood decided two years ago that they might like to send their kids to the local public school.
Henry Levin's National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, based at Teachers College, Columbia University, hasn't always done important and well-balanced work, but it's certainly been prolific. What's more, several of the recent "occasional papers" now available on its burgeoning website strike us as worth knowing about, maybe even reading.
Education Commission of the States June 2001
Patrick J. Wolf, Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West August 2001
As if House and Senate conferees didn't already face enough difficulties in creating a fair definition of "adequate yearly progress" for the new ESEA, an article in this month's Washington Monthly explains how high rates of student mobility can doom an otherwise solid accountability system. According to a GAO study, one out of every six U.S.
Charitable giving in the U.S. is at an all-time high, as is the public's concern with the state of our K-12 education system. This guide provides practical advice for the philanthropist who is fed up with the status quo and eager to support effective education reforms. Making it Count reviews the state of U.S. public education, examines different ways that philanthropists are trying to improve it, explains why some strategies work better than others, profiles a number of education philanthropists, and recounts the experiences of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.
My older sister lived in Scottsdale, Arizona, for many years and her six children attended the public schools there. Her oldest child, my niece, took most of her public schooling in Texas and is now a teacher in Florida. The rest are graduates of the Arizona school system.
In recent weeks, the Chancellor of the New York City public school system has been heavily criticized, especially about cost overruns in school construction. The sharks have been circling, and the New York Times ran an editorial defending him (a sure sign that he is in big trouble). I'd like to say a few things in his behalf. Harold O.
Can you think of anything more fun than chaperoning 76 junior high school kids on a bus trip across America?
Almost 75 percent of new teachers in the Cleveland Municipal School District either were considering leaving or were unsure whether they would stay, according to the results of a survey administered this spring.
Charter schools have come under criticism in some quarters for failing to realize one of the goals emphasized by proponents: that they would serve as laboratories in which novel ideas and methods could be tested and best practices identified for dissemination among traditional public schools. For example, a recent study of California charter schools concluded: "...
Since 1975, the percentage of young adults who have gotten their diploma through the GED program has risen from less than 3 percent to 12 percent. Since the Census Bureau includes GED holders as high school completers, these statistics mask a steady rise in the nation's dropout rate. But does the GED measure up as a high school equivalence exam?
I read the results of the summer school program in New York City with a growing sense of dismay, in part because so many kids gained so little from the experience, but also because I had predicted this would happen in a New York Times op-ed a year ago, when the school system rashly threatened to send 325,000 kids to summer school.
The US has the finest scientists in the world but the rest of the population is abysmally ignorant of science. Why? Because science education in the US today exists as a kind of mining and sorting operation in which existing scientists search for diamonds in the rough who can be cut and polished into elite scientists, according to David Goodstein, a professor of physics at Caltech.
Commission on High Technology Workforce Development August 14, 2001
This week, Phi Delta Kappa (an "honorary fraternity" of professional educators) and Gallup released their 33rd annual poll of the public's attitudes toward the public schools. Normally polls bring good news or bad news, depending on which side you are on.
For the past hundred or so years, the training and certification of public school teachers has been largely in the hands of colleges of education, but this monopoly is now being challenged by private sector entrants into the teacher training business, explains Robert Holland in "The Rise of Private Teacher Training," an issue brief published by the Lexington Institute on August 10. Sylvan
"Doesn't it make sense to link teacher evaluation and measures of student learning?" ask Pamela Tucker and James Strong in an article in the September 2001 issue of the American School Board Journal. Hardly a radical idea, though the NEA is officially opposed.
States and school districts struggling to hire teachers in the final days before school opens are offering all kinds of creative incentives to attract applicants. Among them: redesigning teachers' lounges to resemble quaint New England inns, replacing degree requirements with height requirements, offering free tickets to school plays, and promising unlimited bathroom passes.
Two articles in the September issue of The Atlantic Monthly take a sausage-factory-like look at the college application and admissions process. In "The Early Decision Racket," James Fallows explores how early-decision programs have distorted the admissions process and added an insane level of intensity to middle-class obsessions about getting into college.
In Pennsylvania and Colorado (among other states), parents can now register their children for charter schools that exist only in cyberspace.
Teachers in many states must accumulate professional development credits to maintain their certification, but those who pushed hard for a recently-enacted recertification program in Illinois were horrified to learn that some teachers are satisfying this requirement by taking courses in Tai Chi, massage, and gambling (conducted at a racetrack, no less).
In this week's Weekly Standard, former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett and Boston University Ed School Dean Edwin J. Delattre take aim at the character education program included in the education bills now before Congress.
