Content Listing

Commentary

9.11.2002

Confronting an achievement gap at Berkeley High

Berkeley High-the only public high school in Berkeley, California-sends many of its students on to top colleges but consigns just as many to failure.

Commentary

9.11.2002

Innovative personnel practices in charter schools

Are charter schools really different? Two studies published by the Fordham Foundation in recent years found that charter schools were serving as promising seedbeds for new approaches to finding, employing, and keeping better teachers.

Commentary

9.11.2002

Is it time for school boards to be accountable, too?

Elected urban school board members are not accountable to the public, possess modest skills, are conflict-prone and politicized, and cannot work successfully with superintendents, concludes University of Memphis professor Tom Glass in a yet to be published report described by Jay Mathews at WashingtonPost.com.

Commentary

9.11.2002

Leading the charge against effective reading instruction

The Reading First program, part of the No Child Left Behind Act, offers $5 billion over six years to states and school districts to support research-based reading instruction, but not everybody is happy about the strings attached to this funding.

Commentary

9.11.2002

Liberals and choice

The following appeared on The Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web Today" page on September 9:"In a letter to the editor of The Washington Post, one April Falcon Doss explains why she chose to send her daughter to a private school:For a card-carrying liberal, I was surprisingly unapologetic about our decision.

Commentary

9.11.2002

Realizing the spirit of IDEA

Patrick Wolf

Special education is receiving a lot of attention these days. The federal program to provide special accommodations and services to students with disabilities has been critiqued by a Presidential Commission, by multiple authors of a Thomas B. Fordham Foundation/Progressive Policy Institute volume, and by both Democratic and Republican members of Congress.

Commentary

9.11.2002

Teacher pay experiment in Chattanooga

In Chattanooga, Tennessee, the mayor has developed a performance-pay plan whereby teachers and principals in struggling schools will earn big bonuses if their students make significant progress on state tests. Inspired by the plan, twelve top teachers have made the move to at-risk schools in the city.

Commentary

9.11.2002

Try your hand at American history, NAEP style

Last year, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) administered its latest U.S. history assessment to approximately 29,000 students in grades 4, 8, and 12 in schools across the country. NAEP's web site now offers the public the opportunity to test their knowledge of American history and see how their performance stacks up against students in the nationwide sample.

Commentary

9.11.2002

What it's like to teach seventh grade

Reporter Larry Slonaker took a one year leave of absence from The Mercury News to fulfill a lifelong dream of teaching in a California public school (using an emergency teaching credential).

Commentary

9.11.2002

What makes Rod Paige tick?

A long story in The Christian Science Monitor looks at where Rod Paige came from to try to understand how he became so single-minded about leaving no child behind. Reporter Amanda Paulson interviewed neighbors, family members and former colleagues for this colorful portrait of the Secretary of Education.

Commentary

9.11.2002

A day in the life of an elementary school student

Researchers from Teachers College and the University of Maryland sought to find out "what actually happens to children during an entire school day" so they asked elementary teachers to complete a time diary.