Elementary school principals and safety experts say they're seeing more violence and aggression than ever among their youngest students, according to an article by Greg Toppo in USA Today.
In the midst of depressing financial news elsewhere, Philadelphia district officials announced last week that belt-tightening will eliminate a $28.3 million deficit and, in fact, produce an estimated $2 million surplus by the end of the fiscal year.
As states encounter major revenue shortfalls (due to the sagging economy) and impose freezes or cuts in aid to education, many schools and districts are facing tough decisions about how to allocate their shrinking budgets.
School districts across the country are having an easier time finding and keeping qualified teachers at the very time that shortages were expected to grow more severe.
The New York Times recently gave lavish attention to a "study" conducted by Arizona State University's David C. Berliner and Audrey L. Amrein, and funded by the teachers' unions, that purports to show that high-stakes tests don't promote student learning. In fact, however, the Times has called our attention to a perfect example of how not to study high-stakes testing.
Merit scholarship programs like Georgia's HOPE scholarships - which pay full tuition and fees at any public university or community college in the state (or an equivalent amount for students attending private institutions) for state residents who maintain a grade point average of 3.0 in high school and college - get criticized because they tend to benefit students from well-off families more th
While the President and First Lady celebrated the first anniversary of the No Child Left Behind Act at the White House with school principals and superintendents, education leaders, and members of Congress on Wednesday, critics of the law gripe that it will be impossible for states and districts to comply unless the path is greased with $7.7 billion in additional federal education funds.
Linda Darling-Hammond and Peter YoungsEducation Researcher, December 2002
Frustration with the books used in public schools to teach children how to read is nothing new. An article in The New Yorker recounts how an attack on primers in the 1955 best-seller Why Johnny Can't Read ultimately led to publication of The Cat in the Hat and other classics by Dr. Seuss.
While some have blamed skyrocketing expenditures for special education on an increase in children with disabilities, it has been hard to find solid evidence that the number of students with certain disabilities has increased; it seems more likely that the diagnosis of those disabilities is what has increased. A recent New York Times article about autism illustrates the problem.
Gary Miron, Christopher Nelson, and John RisleyThe Evaluation Center, Western Michigan UniversityOctober 2002
As 2003 opens, hollow public treasuries will make it tougher than ever to revitalize American K-12 education - not because more money will improve our schools but because the most painful parts of the reform process lie ahead and, without dollars to cushion the discomfort, politicians will be loath to ask people to endure it.
Will the sanctions for failing schools laid out in the politics-governance Act (NCLB) succeed in turning those schools around? This report draws on the results of previous efforts to overhaul failing schools to provide a glimpse at what may be expected from NCLB-style interventions. The results: no intervention strategy has a success rate greater than 50%, so policymakers are urged to consider additional options for children trapped in failing schools.
