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Title I clarification
As I read the November 13 edition of Gadfly, I noticed an error in your article on "institutional behaviorism" (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=123#1539).
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Diamonds in the rough
Too often for our taste, articles in the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development's magazine Educational Leadership reflect the status quo. But sense shone through in a recent issue on "The Challenges of Accountability," especially in articles by Craig Jerald and Frederick Hess.
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Houston, we have a problem
The New York Times has lowered the boom on the "Texas Miracle," claiming that its own analysis of SAT-9 test scores of Houston ISD students from 1999-2002 shows that the district made at best modest gains in reading and math, despite claims (based on the now-defunct TAAS assessment) that Houston schools had dramatically increased scores and closed the minority achievement gap.
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Maryland adopts high school exit exam
Yesterday, the Maryland state board of education voted 9-2 to make the state's high school assessment tests a requirement for graduation beginning with the class of 2009. The move makes Maryland one of 19 states that have mandated graduation exit exams. According to the proposal, by 2009 all students would be required to pass at minimum the state's "functional tests" in reading, math,
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And more voucher news
This year, Colorado became the first state to pass a statewide voucher program after last year's landmark Zelman ruling. A legal challenge to the program was inevitable, but we were truly astonished to hear that a district judge has barred the Colorado school voucher program on the grounds that it violates "local control" of schools.
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Board bashing bonanza!
A remarkable two-part story in the Post-Gazette questions the need for and usefulness of school boards, those dinosaurs of progressive politics.
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Ernie is to Bert as...
According to Dahlia Lithwick of Slate, the First Amendment's Establishment and Free Exercise clauses are the "constitutional equivalent of Ernie's relationship to Bert - in that no one really wa
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Parsing the Achievement Gap: Baselines for Tracking Progress
Paul E. Barton, Educational Testing ServiceNovember 2003
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Closing the College Participation Gap: A National Summary
Sandra S. Ruppert, Education Commission of the StatesOctober 2003
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Rolling Up Their Sleeves: Superintendents and Principals Talk About What's Needed to Fix Public Schools
Steve Farkas, Jean Johnson, and Ann Duffett, Public AgendaNovember 2003
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New NAEP, mostly old news
As almost everybody knows, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) last week released - faster than ever before
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Supes in support of NCLB
Trying to out-sing the chorus of negativism surrounding No Child Left Behind, the Hartford Courant reports that 100 minority superintendents have signed a letter expressing support for the law. "We need to be held accountable. We should not be making excuses like, 'Oh, this kid is from a poor neighborhood,'" said Hartford school chief Robert Henry.
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Limited consensus on school choice
Two years ago, the Gates and Casey foundations made grants to Brookings to host a group called the National Working Commission on School Choice, chaired by the University of Washington's Paul Hill and consisting of 13 other members, mainly academics, deemed to represent a reasonably wide spectrum of the informed school-choice debate.
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Apathy in D.C.: It gets worse
In a surprise announcement given after a "hastily called" school board meeting, D.C. school superintendent Paul Vance announced his resignation. When pressed for details about why he was leaving so abruptly, he cited several reasons, including the move by D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams to try to gain control over the beleaguered school system, the system's financial problems, and the D.C.
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Affirmative action: the sequel
After the Supreme Court's recent ruling in two Michigan affirmative action cases, Gratz and Grutter, legal scholars predicted that a flurry of suits would seek to round out the Court's somewhat confusing jurisprudence on this topic. One of these cases, Doe v.
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Public schools under pressure in India
An "educational revolution is under way" in India, writes the New York Times, as millions of low-income parents dig deep to furnish private schooling for their children, a luxury once reserved for the well-to-do.
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The strong-arm of the law
This week, a New York City Council hearing intended to be a debate about the contentious, union-mandated teacher "work rules" (which limit, among other things, how long a teacher can work each day, how schools set faculty meeting agendas, and how teachers are hired and fired) devolved into a heated argument between council member Eva Moskowitz and NYC teachers' union president Randi Weingarten.
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Meeting NCLB Goals for Highly Qualified Teachers: Estimates by State from Survey Data
Rolf K. Blank, Council of Chief State School OfficersNovember 2003
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Having Their Say: The Views of Dayton-Area Parents on Education
The Thomas B. Fordham FoundationNovember 2003
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Seizing the Day: Massachusetts' At-Risk High School Students Speak Out on Their Experiences at the Front Lines of Education Reform
MassInsight EducationOctober 2003
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Education and Capitalism: How Overcoming Our Fear of Markets and Economics Can Improve America's Schools
Herbert J. Walberg and Joseph L. Bast, Hoover Institution PressNovember 2003
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New teacher test gets Gem State OK
Good news on teacher quality: the Idaho state board of education has voted to accept the new Passport to Teaching test as a route to certification. Developed by the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, the test makes mastery of content knowledge the central factor in determining whether a teacher is qualified.
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Sweet victory
In 1999, the then head of the Colorado Springs NAACP, Willie Breazell, Sr. was fired for writing a pro-school choice column - an unforgivable sin in the eyes of the leadership of many African-American pressure groups.
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Hitting them where it hurts
Call it the last frontier of accountability: a former Louisiana school board member is pushing an initiative to withhold the $800-per-month salaries of school board members who oversee parishes with failing schools. "The accountability system is looking hard at everybody - the children, the teachers. Let's put the school board members in that category," said John Crose, recently of the St.
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Institutional behaviorism?
"Behaviorism," says the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "purports to explain human and animal behavior in terms of external physical stimuli, responses, learning histories, and (for certain types of behavior) reinforcements. . . . To illustrate, consider a food-deprived rat in an experimental chamber.
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A new twist for NAEP
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), better known as the Nation's Report Card, has been used for 34 years to test representative samples of students in math, reading, writing, geography, U.S. history, and other subjects.
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Right idea, wrong charter
At first glance, the move by Barnstable, Massachusetts to transform all of its traditional district schools to charter schools is a bold and worthwhile reform experiment. The fine print, however, shows that plan to be a bit more, well, complex.
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'Times' gives it the old college try
Though Congress will not complete (nor the Senate even commence) reauthorization of the Higher Education Act until next year, the debate is in full swing.
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Truth and spin about NCLB
Jay Mathews weighs in with an even-handed column debunking ten myths about NCLB. He gets it pretty much right, managing in the process to tweak both the law's critics and supporters.