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Collective bargaining and education policy
Considerable attention has recently focused on a bill (AB 2160) working its way through the California legislature that would expand the scope of collective bargaining beyond wages and working conditions to include matters of education policy such as curriculum and textbooks. The bill has the strong support of the California Teachers Association, the state's largest teacher union.
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A field guide to low academic standards
The miserable failure of most states to implement the requirements of the 1994 federal education amendments in timely fashion had already cast a veil of doubt over the prospects for No Child Left Behind: the stark fact that states don't necessarily make the changes that Washington expects of them-and then get away with it.But what happens when states do comply with the formal requirement
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Why social studies teachers don't teach history and what to do about it
Last week, the Department of Education released the most recent batch of scores on the NAEP history exam, and the results for 12th graders were abysmal.
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School districts worry about letting kids leave failing schools
The No Child Left Behind Act requires school districts to allow children in persistently failing schools to transfer to better (public) schools and to pay the transportation costs for those students to reach their new schools. For thousands of schools, that provision takes effect in September.
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Special Education Services in Colorado Charter Schools
Debora Scheffel, Colorado Department of EducationMarch 2002
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Statement of the Wingspread Coalition: Where Will We Find the Leaders and What Will We Ask Them to Do?
Forum for the American School SuperintendentJanuary 2002
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Education Management Organizations: Growing a For-profit Education Industry with Choice, Competition, and Innovation
Guilbert C. Hentschke, Scot Oschman and Lisa Snell, Reason Public Policy InstituteMay 2002
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Final Report of the Evaluation of New York Networks for School Renewal: An Annenberg Foundation Challenge for New York City
Institute for Education and Social Policy, Steinhardt School of Education, New York UniversityDecember 2001
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In response to "The Special Ed Burden," guest editorial by Jay Greene in last week's Gadfly.
Mr. Greene: Superb analysis. I had never considered that full funding of special education costs by the federal government would dramatically increase public schools' incentive to classify challenging children.
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The myth of the special ed burden
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.
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Do we really need school boards?
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?
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"Lost at Sea": New Teachers' Experiences with Curriculum and Assessment
David Kauffman, Susan Moore Johnson, Susan M. Kardos, Edward Liu and Heather G. Peske, Teachers College Record2002
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Facing the Challenges of Whole-School Reform: New American Schools After A Decade
Mark Berends, Susan J. Bodilly and Sheila Nataraj Kirby, RAND2002
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New American Schools, Driven By Results, A Decade of Experience, and other papers
New American Schools2002
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Enhancing Urban Children's Early Success in School
Andrea Del Gaudio Weiss and Robert M. Offenberg, American Educational Research AssociationApril 2002
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NBPTS-certified teachers flunk value-added test in Tennessee
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.
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High school seniors still know little U.S. history
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.
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Teachers' Professional Lives: A View from Nine Industrialized Countries
Carol F. Stoel and Tin-Swe Thant, Council for Basic EducationMarch 18, 2002
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Toward smarter education philanthropy
The New York Times is gaga once again over America's "new philanthropists" and the giant "wealth transfer" that is said to be transforming American philanthropy.
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States and feds move to implement new testing requirements
As federal officials gear up to implement the No Child Left Behind Act, state policymakers are all over the map in their plans for addressing the requirements of that complex new law. In Vermont, Governor Howard Dean said he will ask state officials to consider rejecting federal education funds to avoid having to meet the new federal testing requirements.
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School Choice or Best Systems: What Improves Education?
edited by Margaret C. Wang and Herbert J. Walberg2002
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What's Public About Charter Schools? Lessons Learned about Choice and Accountability
Gary Miron and Christopher Nelson2002
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Choice with Equity
Another new Koret Task Force volume from Hoover, this one is edited by Paul Hill, runs 222 pages and, in seven chapters, closely examines the issue of children alleged to be "left behind" by school-choice programs.
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MegaSkills
And now for something completely different, not a book or report but a website. Surf to the MegaSkills website to learn about this education training program, developed in 1972 by Dorothy Rich, a champion of parental involvement in education and founder and president of the Home and School Institute.