Commentary
Creating Seamless Educational Transitions for Urban African American and Hispanic Students
Richard Noeth and George Wimberly, ACT2002
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Defining a knowledge base for teachers
In "A Knowledge Base for the Teaching Profession: What Would It Look Like and How Can We Get One?" James Hiebert, Ronald Gallimore and James Stigler acknowledge that the U.S. teaching profession does not draw heavily upon a shared base of solid "craft knowledge" grounded in the analysis and communication of what effective teachers have learned. "Practitioner knowledge," they call it.
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Defining educational accountability
"Making School Reform Work" is the slightly misleading title of an essay by Checker Finn on the subject of educational accountability in the summer 2002 issue of The Public Interest. It distinguishes three distinct forms of accountability and seeks to evaluate them.
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New poll shows most blacks support school choice
Nearly two thirds of blacks would enroll their children in a charter or private school if given the chance, according to a poll by the Black America's Political Action Committee. Conducted during the week before the Zelman decision, the poll also showed that the majority of blacks surveyed gave public schools a "C" grade or lower when asked to evaluate their condition.
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Creating a test that doesn't offend anyone, anywhere, anytime
With rewards and punishments now tied to test scores, states can't afford to risk complaints about bias in their test questions, so sensitivity guidelines adopted in the 1960s to address the "culturally lopsided" view of America presented in the reading passages of standardized tests have now stretched to cover "almost everyone in almost every situation." Testing companies avoid mentioning anyt
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The shame of the AFT
Yesterday brought the official release of a much-hyped and professionally leaked "study" of U.S. charter schools by the American Federation of Teachers, timed to coincide with the union's convention in Las Vegas. In a word, it reeks.It reeks of error, distortion and untruth about charter schools, how they're working, what effects they're having, what we know about them.
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Vouchers promote integration, not segregation
In an op-ed published by The Wall Street Journal, Jay Greene warns voucher supporters that the teachers unions, the Harvard Civil Rights Project and others, are already sharpening their knives to attack vouchers on a different constitutional front-the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause-by arguing that vouchers increase segregation.
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Zelman: The Triumph of Pluribus over Unum?
It is generally agreed that the Supreme Court's decision in the Zelman case issued on June 27 approving the constitutionality of vouchers that would enable parents to receive tax funds to pay tuition to send their children to religious schools as well as to other private and public schools is a landmark change in American constitutional and educational history.
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Edison test score results are in the eye of the beholder
Supporters and opponents of Edison Schools frequently butt heads over whether Edison-run schools are performing better than similar schools in the same districts.
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An open letter to the president of Harvard
Readers with a stomach for more commentary from the Gadfly's Checker Finn may want to peruse "An Open Letter to Lawrence H. Summers," which reflects upon Summers' first year as president of Harvard.
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Shooting for the Sun: The Message of Middle School Reform (Selected Remarks of M. Hayes Mizell)
The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation2002
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New wrinkles in the game of college admissions
Getting the incentives right in the high-stakes game of college admissions is always a challenge, but two recent changes-one in the SAT's disability policy, the other in the admissions system of the University of California-are raising eyebrows.
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Helping failing schools is easier said than done
State accountability systems are shining a harsh spotlight on failing schools, and education officials in several states are striving to help those schools turn around.
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Higher Pay for Hard-to-Staff Schools: The Case for Financial Incentives
This fifty-page paper by Cynthia Prince, issues director at the American Association of School Administrators, contends that "offering financial incentives to teachers willing to take on more challenging assignments is essential if we are to staff every school with highly qualified teachers....Changing the way that teachers are paid is critical if we are to attract and hold teachers in the scho
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Developments in School Finance 1999-2000
William J. Fowler Jr., ed., National Center for Education StatisticsJuly 2002
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Attending a top high school hurts admission chances at selective colleges
It's not often that a study published in the journal Sociology of Education makes the front page of The Washington Post, but that's what happens when the study's findings suggest that sending junior to Andover may not have been such a good idea after all.
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Foundations withdraw grants to Pittsburgh school district
Convinced that the leadership battles between board and superintendent were creating a crisis for the Pittsburgh school district, three major local foundations announced that they were indefinitely suspending all funding to the district.
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AFT argues for curricular coherence
The summer 2002 issue of American Educator, the A.F.T.'s flagship publication, now edited by Ruth Wattenberg, continues this quarterly's fine record of serious, thoughtful, constructive and nicely presented work.
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Block scheduling lowers test scores
Block scheduling caused the test scores of high school students in Iowa to drop, according to a new study by Iowa State University. The popular reform, which ordinarily divides the school day into four 80-to-90 minute classes instead of the traditional schedule of eight classes of 45-to-50 minutes each, led to "markedly lower" ACT scores.
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Reinventing special education
After nine months of labor, the President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education has given birth to a stunning report.
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Public school choice provisions of No Child Left Behind Act kick in
Students in approximately 8,600 schools across the country must be given the option to attend a higher-performing school this year because the school they currently attend has failed to make adequate yearly progress, U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige announced last week.
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Who benefits from the Zelman decision?
On the Newsweek website last week, Jonathan Alter tried to debunk the notion that the Supreme Court's ruling will turn the educational and political tides in favor of vouchers and Republicans who favor them. ("America still hates vouchers") Mickey Kaus quickly refuted Alter in his Kausfiles column on Slate.
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Why vouchers can't be taken to scale
According to school choice critic Richard Kahlenberg, private school vouchers will never work because successes with small pilot-level voucher programs (which help some students at the expense of others) cannot be replicated when taken to scale.
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