Commentary
Commentary
Uncommon Wisdom: Effective Reform Strategies, The 2001 Vanguard Schools, Mass Insight
As Congress wraps up the ESEA reauthorization process, standards-based reform has taken center stage. Soon, the debate over "adequate yearly progress" and other exciting details will end, and a timeless question will re-emerge: motivated by these new incentives, how should schools transform themselves in order to increase student achievement?
Commentary
Union Hypocrisy
The National Education Association (N.E.A.) would rather die than let parents choose their children's schools-but this week it voted to let them decide whether or not their kids will take tests! What's the difference?
Commentary
Up with everyone!
Since 1994, high schools in Los Angeles have been able to name as many valedictorians as they like rather than singling out one top student. To avoid making any good students feel bad, some schools had 30, 40, and even 90 valedictorians this year.
Commentary
Reduce Your Losses: Help New Teachers Become Veteran Teachers, Southern Regional Education Board
This report by the Southern Regional Education Board looks at one of our education system's biggest challenges: convincing new teachers to stay on. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, a quarter of beginning teachers leave the classroom during the first five years. "Reduce Your Losses" asks why many young teachers want to change careers soon after entering the classroom.
Commentary
Summer reading from the AFT
The summer issue of the American Federation of Teacher's magazine, American Educator, has several must-read articles. E.D.
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High Student Achievement: How Six School Districts Changed into High-Performing Systems
The Educational Research Service's new study of high-performing districts expands on an appraisal of high-performing schools that it published three years ago.
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Testing Teacher Candidates: The Role of Licensure Tests in Improving Teacher Quality
The National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council is at it again, taking money from the (Clinton) Department of Education to advance the education profession's conventional wisdom while claiming to be engaged in serious analysis.
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Affirmative action for speakers of second languages
A year after the University of California system made changes in its admissions policy designed to increase campus diversity, Hispanic admissions soared 18%.
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Voucher researchers defend their turf
School choice researchers and critics discuss the strengths and weaknesses of studies analyzing the effects of vouchers in "The Problem With Studying Vouchers," by D.W. Miller, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 13, 2001 (Article is available only to subscribers.)
Commentary
Paige Nonsense
I was out of the country last week and expected to return to find an end to the media frenzy about Education Secretary Rod Paige being (a) unhappy with his job, (b) "out of the policy loop" and (c) on the verge of quitting. Alas, this foolishness seemed, if anything, to have intensified.
Commentary
Privatizing Education: Can the Marketplace Deliver Choice, Efficiency, Equity, and Social Cohesion?
Long-time education policy analyst Henry M. Levin now heads the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, based at Teachers College, Columbia. That center held its kick-off conference in April 1999. The conference papers have now been collected in this volume, which Levin edited.
Commentary
Report card on report cards
Nearly all states post report cards on the internet that show parents (and others) how their children's schools are doing, but some of these report cards are more useful than others. The Heritage Foundation has created a web site that highlights the 10 best internet-based school report cards, explains why such measures are important, and includes links to school report cards in all the states.
Commentary
School Choice in New Zealand: Sixteen Years of Unprecedented Success
Children First America has issued an eight-page brief describing bold reforms that the Kiwis have made to their education system over the past decade and a half.