Displaying 211-240 of 524 results
Commentary
7.23.2003

Art of the possible

We don't always agree with every single thing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has to say about education but they're growing wiser with age, particularly when it comes to charter (and private) schools.

Commentary
7.23.2003

Young to head CA charter org

Former Los Angeles school board president Caprice Young, who warmed the hearts of education reformers during her four years in office and accomplished more than anyone expected with that sprawling, balky school system, has agreed to head a newly formed organization that will support the 400+ charter schools in California and help others get started.

Commentary
7.16.2003

Constitutional confusion in Nevada

In a decision the Las Vegas Review-Journal called "stunning," Nevada's highest court overturned a referendum twice passed by state voters that requires a supermajority of legislators to approve new tax increases. The basis: a desire to increase school funding.

Commentary
7.16.2003

D.C. vouchers: getting closer?

Gadfly is generally unsympathetic to unexcused absences. But this time we'll make an exception. Last week, the House Government Reform committee passed a bill authorizing education vouchers in the nation's capital on a close-to-party-line vote of 22-21. Only the absence of opponent Representative Major Owens (D-N.Y.) saved the bill from being stalled in committee by a tie, which D.C.

Commentary
7.16.2003

TFA short $13 million in AmeriCorps cuts

As reported in Gadfly several weeks ago, Teach for America has feared for some time that it would be wounded by the drastic funding cuts for the national service program AmeriCorps.

Commentary
7.16.2003

Affirmative action: a tale of two countries

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

"We expect," wrote Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, on behalf of a 5-4 Supreme Court majority okaying race-based affirmative action in the recent Michigan cases, "that 25 years from now the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today." [For Gadfly's coverage, see h

Commentary
7.16.2003

Ready to rumble over Ready to Teach

By an overwhelming margin, the U.S. House of Representatives has raised the stakes on teacher preparation. The Ready to Teach Act, passed last week by a 404-17 vote, would make the passage rate of graduates of teacher training colleges a factor in awarding federal dollars to those institutions.

Commentary
7.9.2003

NEA comes out swinging against NCLB

In case you were wondering, the National Education Association has decided that it opposes the No Child Left Behind Act. Meeting in New Orleans this week, union members approved a plan to lobby Congress to drop or amend major portions of the law, allow states control over when its accountability measures will - if ever - take effect, and provide new federal funding for its implementation.

Commentary
7.9.2003

Charters faced with increased regulation

As the number of charter schools has grown across the country, so has the number of bureaucratic requirements and red tape surrounding charter school operation.

Commentary
7.9.2003

Students on high school: stupid, boring, waste

It's hardly news to say that students complain about school being boring. But it ought to give us pause that such a wide and varied range of students report, contemptuously, that America's high schools are almost uniformly incapable of sparking their intellectual interest.

Commentary
7.9.2003

Historical ignorance, continued

It's a fairly typical slow-news-day article about American students' appalling lack of civic and historical knowledge. (The article opens with a Mississippi state senator quizzing local high school seniors on the three unalienable rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence.

Commentary
7.9.2003

The teacher as civic agitator

Amy Kass

For more than 30 years, I've been - or at least, have tried to be - an agitator. The classroom has been my bailiwick, unsuspecting and complacent students my target. I am the sort of teacher who aims less to please than to annoy, to stir things up, to agitate.

Commentary
7.9.2003

On standards, the status quo strikes back

According to the California state board of education's definition of a "persistently dangerous" school, there are no persistently dangerous schools in the state.