This coming year, I have resolved to quit smoking, lose weight, and spend more time with my children. I strongly suspect that, by late January, my waistline will continue to expand like a special-ed budget, my lungs will still be in hock to Phillip Morris, and my children will still weep for their absentee father and curse the day he met the slave driver who employs him.
There are many ways that states, schools, and districts can work to "beat" No Child Left Behind.
From our neighbor to the north, a heart-warming story of the nerd striking back. Andrew Ironside, an unpopular, bookish, unathletic high school senior in Ontario, was elected valedictorian by his classmates, who thought it would be funny to put him in the spotlight. A classmate introduced him at the ceremony by saying cruelly, "I'm pretty happy to say I've spent time with almost all of you.
Paul Peterson and Martin West, editors, The Brookings Institution 2003
Barnett Berry, Laura Turchi, and Dylan Johnson, Southeast Center for Teaching Quality, Inc.; Dwight Hare and Deborah Duncan Owens, Mississippi State University; and Steve Clements, Kentucky Professional Standards BoardNovember 2003
Faced with budget shortfalls and No Child Left Behind requirements, many states are looking to cut funding for gifted and talented classes to free up extra cash for programs aimed at struggling students.
In November, we reported on a Brookings conference, "Is law undermining public education?" (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=122#1533 for more details), where education reformers and researchers gathered to discuss ways that excessive litigation has tied school districts in knots.
At the holidays, it's traditional to count your blessings. This essay in the Houston Chronicle reminds us that, whatever its flaws, America remains a bulwark of freedom, a blessing, and a shining ideal. The author, a Cuban mother, is pained when her five-year-old son returns from school singing the praises of five Cuban spies imprisoned in America for espionage.
In October, Mike Antonucci and his invaluable Communiqu?? drew our attention to news that the California Teachers Association planned to spend $250,000 to organize teachers in Golden State charter schools.
'Twas the day before vouchers, and all through the landThe foes of school choice had a further demand.The bus routes were planned with extraordinary care,Though Congress had acted with no time to spare.The children were nestled all snug in their beds,While visions of better schools danced in their heads;Rod and Gene in their office, and Nina by phone,Had reviewed
Southeast Asian countries seem to be learning a lesson that's taking Americans longer to understand: bureaucracy should not get in the way of needed education improvements and the most important reforms are grounded in new forms of accountability, not larger budgets.
Department of Health and Human ServicesDecember 2003
Education Innovation ConsortiumFall 2003
In 1995, Texas philanthropist Peter O'Donnell started an incentive program aimed at improving the quality of Dallas public schools. Unlike most school reforms, this one was aimed at raising the bar for the highest achieving students in the school by awarding $100 rewards to all students who passed an Advanced Placement test, and $150 teacher bonuses for every student that passed.
A recent report from the British government's Office of Standards in Education attributes the schools' continued failure to meet proficiency targets in math and English to "a stubborn core" of badly trained teachers with a poor grasp of subject knowledge
There is good news, bad news, and troubling nonsense associated with the 2003 big-city NAEP results (for 4th and 8th grade reading and math) released yesterday by the Department of Education.
Center for Education Research and Policy at MassINCFall 2003
Discipline - or, if you prefer the euphemism, classroom management
Andrew Wolf reports in the New York Sun that the New York City department of education has "overspent its budget for professional service contracts by more than $200 million" over the past year, in pursuit of the elusive and unproven "professional development." According to Wolf, the Big Apple's schools are essentially trying to make up for the failings of their chosen "progressive" ma
This week, Time has a chilling report on the increase in violent incidents among very young students. In Philadelphia, for example, schools chief Paul Vallas had to institute a get-tough policy after 21 serious assaults on teachers and fellow students by kindergartners last year, including one boy who punched a pregnant teacher in the stomach.
If there is a master plan behind the school reform agenda of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his chancellor, Joel Klein, we have yet to divine it. On some issues, their instincts are good - charter schools, for example (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=121#1520).
The tragedy of urban education is the dearth of effective schools for poor kids. That acute shortage belies the right nominally conferred by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, namely that parents can move their children from failing public schools to better ones.
The Center for Education ReformNovember 2003
Andrew Coulson, Mackinac Center for Public PolicyMay 2003
American society is groaning under a tide of litigiousness, and education is one of the fields most profoundly affected by it.
This week, the pilot District of Columbia voucher program cleared another important barrier when it passed the House as part of a huge consolidated spending bill. Included are $13 million for the voucher program itself, $1 million for administrative expenses, and an additional $13 million for both D.C. public and charter schools. Children in D.C.
This week, Education Secretary Rod Paige announced new guidance on one of the stickiest questions surrounding the AYP requirements of NCLB: just how to deal with severely disabled pupils in calculating who is and isn't making adequate yearly progress.
