The debate swirling around renewal of the major federal law addressing special education, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), draws much of its energy from a widely shared but probably false premise: that schools are increasingly swamped with disabled children who are diverting scarce resources away from other students.
New American Schools2002
Teachers who are certified as outstanding by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) are awarded large salary increases in many states and districts, but some researchers have questioned whether the NBPTS is accurately identifying the most effective teachers with its complex and expensive procedures.
David Kauffman, Susan Moore Johnson, Susan M. Kardos, Edward Liu and Heather G. Peske, Teachers College Record2002
Mark Berends, Susan J. Bodilly and Sheila Nataraj Kirby, RAND2002
Why have school boards at all? asked Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt in a provocative op-ed this week. We don't elect our city police chief or our county health commissioner, yet nobody sees this as a denial of democracy. Why not let our elected mayors and city or county councils-the people who make the budgets-take similar responsibility for public schools?
The U.S. Department of Education released the results of the 2001 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in history today, and while the scores of fourth and eighth graders have modestly improved since 1994, the scores of twelfth graders were frustratingly low and showed no improvement.
Andrea Del Gaudio Weiss and Robert M. Offenberg, American Educational Research AssociationApril 2002
Carol F. Stoel and Tin-Swe Thant, Council for Basic EducationMarch 18, 2002
