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Displaying 181-210 of 319 results
Commentary
8.15.2001

Starting Strong

Karen Baker

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development

Commentary
8.15.2001

Make ed schools sing for their supper

In a piece in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education, Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation and former president of Brown University argues that we should stop blaming teachers for their professional shortcomings and start pointing fingers at the universities and colleges that train them.

Commentary
8.15.2001

National Center for Accountability to study achievement data and schools

Just for the Kids-the nonprofit group best known for making school-level accountability data available in an innovative, user-friendly website-is now teaming with the Education Commission of the States and the University of Texas to launch the National Center for Accountability.

Commentary
8.15.2001

How to keep good principals

Diane Ravitch

Time magazine and other national media have recently featured the work of a program called "New Leaders for New Schools," which is preparing 15 people to become school principals. This is most certainly a valuable activity and it deserves commendation if, in fact, the 15 people do someday turn out to be not only principals but good principals.

Commentary
8.15.2001

Confusion about commercialism in schools

Pizza Hut offers free pizza to students who read a certain number of books while rival Domino's rewards schools with free books if the school community buys pizza from its outlets. Do these deals harm students by commercializing schools, as critics suggest?

Commentary
8.8.2001

Teach for America instructors outshine experienced teachers

Teach for America teachers perform as well or better than other teachers employed by the Houston Independent School District, according to an independent study by CREDO, a research group based at Stanford's Hoover Institution. An editorial in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution argues that Georgia should also open its doors to prospective teachers like these.

Commentary
8.8.2001

Performance Pay Roadblocks

The movement to link teacher pay to performance in the classroom has taken several giant steps forward this year-in Iowa, Arizona, and Toledo, just to name a few places-but it took two steps back last week.

Commentary
8.8.2001

Revolution in the ed schools

Almost everyone agrees that schools of education need an overhaul and Martin Kozloff, a reform-minded professor of education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, explains how this should happen in a manifesto posted on EducationNews.org.

Commentary
8.8.2001

New corps of urban principals breaks barriers to entry

Last week, New Leaders for New Schools introduced its first corps of urban principals, highly-qualified individuals without standard principal credentials who have been given special training and served apprenticeships under master principals before taking the reins of their own schools. Solving the principal shortage will require districts to embrace innovative strategies like this.

Report
8.1.2001
Charter Schools, Teachers & School Leaders

Personnel Policy in Charter Schools

Dale Ballou, Michael Podgursky

When schools are held accountable for results and freed from red tape governing personnel decisions, they take advantage of their freedom by adopting innovative strategies for hiring and rewarding teachers, according to this new report by economists Michael Podgursky and Dale Ballou. This study is based on a survey administered to a random sample of 132 public charter schools that have been operating for at least three years.

Commentary
7.24.2001

Using data to hold feet to the fire

Police commanders in New York City face weekly "Compstat" meetings in which reams of crime statistics are scrutinized and commanders are grilled about trends in their precincts.

Commentary
7.24.2001

Weighing the cow does make it fatter

Caroline Hoxby wondered whether adopting report cards for schools causes a state to improve academic achievement. She examined state NAEP scores to see if there was any difference between states that adopted report card systems early on and states that were latecomers to the report card bandwagon.

Commentary
7.24.2001

We're #5 (in percentage of adults with college degrees)

For the first time, the US has lost its world lead in college completion rates. The UK, New Zealand, Finland, and the Netherlands all have higher percentages of young adults with college degrees than we do. Jay Mathews considers whether we should be worried in "The New Completion Competition," Washington Post Magazine, July 22, 2001.

Commentary
7.24.2001

Fraud and Education: The Worm in the Apple

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Harold J. Noah (emeritus professor at Teachers College, Columbia) and Max A. Eckstein (emeritus professor at Queens College, CUNY) have written this disturbing book about education fraud and chicanery. They spotlight student cheating, credentials fraud and misconduct by professionals.

Commentary
7.24.2001

Revitalizing Federal Education Research and Development

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Education historian Maris A. Vinovskis is the author of this thorough, fact-filled and perceptive 270-page volume subtitled "Improving the R & D Centers, Regional Educational Laboratories, and the 'New' OERI." Much of the material in its five chapters has appeared elsewhere, but it's extremely valuable to have this all in one place.