This month's issue of "&ize," the Institute for Justice's monthly compilation of media clips - features a case study on the future of school choice. Included are scads of news articles from the past year - many that you've seen but also some you may have missed - that document where the school choice movement has been and where it's going. A handy volume for any reformer's bookshelf.
Students in the Lone Star state's class of 2005 - today's 10th graders - will have to pass the new Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) in order to graduate from high school. A report released by the Texas Education Agency earlier this month indicates that more than 53 percent of students will have trouble passing the test and risk being denied a diploma.
A recent article in The World & I examines how computer giant IBM's massive Reinventing Education initiative - which seeks to bring classroom-and school-level successes to scale - is transforming not only the company's culture, but also the way teachers do their jobs.
I enjoyed Checker's recent piece on school report cards. [See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=31#438] But he neglected two big issues: First, the need for huge amounts of PUBLICITY to make parents aware that these report cards even exist.
Dan Laitsch, Education Policy Analysis ArchivesDecember 4, 2002
Edited by Michael Pressley2002
Rt. Hon. John Redwood and Nick Seaton, Centre for Policy StudiesSeptember 2002
Scott Joftus and Brenda Maddox-Dolan, Alliance for Excellent EducationDecember 2002
General Accounting OfficeDecember 2002
FBI agents have seized fur coats, alligator shoes, a $57,000 Tiffany tea set, a $13,000 plasma TV set, and hundreds of other luxury items from the homes and offices of the former president of the Washington (D.C) Teachers' Union and her assistant as part of an investigation into the disappearance of over $2 million in union funds over the past several years.
As readers may have noticed, these "desk" messages tend toward the crotchety and Cassandra-ish. That's because we see plenty still not working well in U.S.
Your recent report [see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=31#442] on the vote of the Massachusetts Board of Education to endorse standards for a "certificate of attainment" might leave your readers with the impression that we have established an alternative diploma. We have not.
Chancellor Joel Klein says that New York City's best principals will get up to $75,000 in bonus pay if they agree to work for three years with a principal-in-training in a failing school.
Charles Zogby has resigned as Pennsylvania's Education Secretary, leaving behind a legacy of controversial but sensible and far-reaching reforms. Among many other accomplishments, Zogby and his predecessor, Eugene Hickok, now U.S.
A successful suburban principal with thirty years' experience - a woman hired to work miracles - has crashed and burned after only four months as principal of a troubled Philadelphia elementary school that's now managed by Edison Schools.
Step back from the furor over Trent Lott's recent statement and observe how the episode itself opens a window onto the legacy of distrust that has characterized African-American views of conservatives and Republicans since the civil rights era.This distrust has shaped public policy on many fronts but perhaps nowhere as profoundly as in K-12 education.
Virginia third-graders are having a blast while studying for the Standards of Learning (SOL) exams thanks to SOLAR, a computer software program designed by Lockheed Martin Corp. When students answer SOL-like questions correctly, the program rewards them with exciting graphics and sound effects reminiscent of a video game.
Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D., and Elizabeth H. MoserMackinac Center for Public PolicyDecember 2002
Geoffrey Borman, Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk, Johns Hopkins UniversityNovember 2002
Massachusetts has granted appeals to roughly 200 students who demonstrated-via good grades, stellar attendance, teacher recommendations, and having taken part in MCAS tutoring-that they knew enough to graduate despite thrice failing at least one section of the state exit test by a narrow margin.
U.S. Department of EducationNovember 2002
Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Sol Stern recently called upon President Bush, come January, to seize his "unprecedented opportunity" to create a pilot voucher program for poor kids trapped in the District of Columbia's dismal schools.
States are edging closer to compliance with No Child Left Behind but are a long way off in some areas, according to an Education Week survey conducted for the paper's forthcoming (January '03) Quality Counts 2003 report.
Among the predictable questions that arise during just about every discussion of school choice is one along these lines: "We live in a rural community and there's no other school within forty miles. How could school choice possibly benefit our children?
edited by Marc S. Tucker and Judy B. Codding2002
Jay P. Greene and Greg Forster, Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan InstituteDecember 2002
