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.
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.
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.
United States General Accounting OfficeOctober 2003
When New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg won control over the city's long beleaguered school system, we were cautiously optimistic that this move might be the long-overdue change in governance that could help turn Gotham's failing schools around.
Social studies teachers across the country routinely try to teach their students "what things were like" at particular times and places in history. Many such lessons, however, are a waste of time.
Columbia University president Lee Bollinger is full of folly. First, he offered the world a troubling vision of the future of journalism schools that would render them more like ed schools.
Two examples this week of why injecting competition into the system works. In Minneapolis, word comes that the local district has lost almost 5,500 students in the past five years, mostly to charter schools and suburban schools through open enrollment plans. In response, district leaders say they are looking into making their schools more responsive to the needs and wants of parents.
Arnold Schwarzenegger's previous foray into education policy (a statewide ballot initiative on after-school programs) left something to be desired.
David Conley, Director, Standards for Success, Associate Professor, University of Oregon2003
Krista Kafer, The Heritage FoundationOctober 29, 2003
Ruth Curran Neild, Elizabeth Useem, Eva F. Travers, and Joy Lesnick, Research for Action2003
Peter Frumkin, Annie E. Casey FoundationOctober 2003
Everyone knows that No Child Left Behind has sparked some opposition in the states. But that opposition reached brazen new heights this week, when Utah education officials reported that 95 percent of the state's public school classes are taught by "highly qualified" teachers.
Yesterday, at a conference sponsored by Common Good at the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, education reformers and researchers (including our own Checker Finn) came together to discuss the educational downsides of excessive litigation and regulation. Teachers and administrators were described as walking on eggshells out of fear of lawsuits.
The lack of intellectual diversity on college campuses today is not just an issue for conservatives. On Wednesday, four witnesses, three of them self-proclaimed liberals, talked with the Senate HELP Committee about the dangers of the one-sided education being provided at America's colleges and universities.
Earlier this month, D.C. mayor Anthony Williams began to lobby for mayoral control over District schools - a move that has been tried in other big cities with mixed results.
We are heartened by news that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg plans to dramatically expand the number of Gotham's charter schools from two dozen to more than 50.
The GOP is responding to allegations that No Child Left Behind is an "unfunded mandate" and that not enough federal dollars are being appropriated for it.
In the October 16 Gadfly, I cited a "sage observer" of the school choice scene who suggested that grassroots activism and the large sums being spent thereon are not actually influencing votes in the halls of Congress or state legislatures and that all this money and energy might better be deployed to elect different candidates rather than struggling to change minds of those alr
The American Enterprise Institute, the Progressive Policy Institute, and the National Council on Teacher Quality October 2003
Paul T. Hill and Kacey Guin, University of WashingtonEducation Policy Analysis ArchivesOctober 2003
AARP Knowledge Management, NRTA: AARP's Educator Community, and HarrisInteractive Inc.2003
Amanda K. Miller and Kathryn Chandler, National Center for Education StatisticsOctober 2003
In 1970, on the reasonable assumption that teachers need to know something before they can teach it, California legislators passed the Ryan Act, mandating that people training to become teachers in the Golden State must earn a bachelor's degree before taking classes in pedagogy and suchlike.
As reported earlier, Minnesota's swell new social studies standards are out for public comment [see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=114#1433]. Now you can read some of these comments and, alas, many are both harsh and moronic.
With the passage of the politics-governance Act (NCLB), states have had to adjust their accountability systems to comply with federal law. As a result, in the summer of 2003 Ohio's Governor Taft signed House Bill 3, which dramatically changed the state's assessment system and what it means for charter schools. This report helps charter school leaders coordinate their testing and data reporting procedures to meet state and federal guidelines, in the hope that all students might surpass Ohio's academic expectations.
Just as TIME reported that the College Board plans to drop the analogies section from the SAT, education blogger Joanne Jacobs recounts a story about a Kennewick, Washington high school teacher who, after a lesson on the Salem Witch Trials, asked his students to write a "Mass Hysteria Essay" in which they "expose injustices caused by mass hysteria" and "compare the causes and effects o
We recently reported on a group of resourceful students and parents in Marysville, Washington who lobbied the governor, held a press conference, and went to court to try to get their teachers to end the longest teachers strike in state history.
To help states comply with the highly-qualified teacher and school-choice provisions of NCLB, the Department of Education recently awarded more than $13 million in grants to several organizations to help attract able professionals into teaching, to inform families of their educational options under NCLB, and to expand and study charter school achievement.
