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Kill the Messenger: The War on Standardized Testing
Richard P. Phelps, with a foreword by Herbert J. Walberg and a preface by J.E. Stone, Transaction Publishers2003
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Kudos for assessment courage
With encouragement from the Council of Great City Schools and various dispensations and special funding from the powers that be at NAEP, a handful of America's big-city school systems are doing something gutsy and important: administering the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests to representative samples of their 4th and 8th graders and allowing the results to be reported just as i
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Listening to teachers
Those who would change the teaching profession by instituting pay incentives tied to performance can learn some things about teacher attitudes toward the issue from the latest Public Agenda study, Stand By Me. Here, I'd like to focus on what teachers told us was a glaring flaw in the public schools and what they would support to solve it.
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Dem defection on D.C. vouchers
Gadfly tries not to read the political tea leaves, preferring a just-the-facts approach. But when the senior Senator from California, Democratic impresario, and teachers' union darling Dianne Feinstein comes out in favor of private school vouchers, something important is going on. Feinstein has emerged as a potential swing vote in the Senate, where foes of the D.C.
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Choice expands in FL
Florida's Opportunity Scholarship program, which lets students in persistently failing schools use a publicly funded voucher at the school of their choice, is doubling in size as more and more families in the (so far) nine failing Florida schools become aware of their options.
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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.
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Affirmative action: a tale of two countries
"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
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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.
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Hispanics in Science and Engineering: A Matter of Assistance and Persistence
Educational Testing ServiceMay 2003
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National Assessment of Educational Progress: The Nation's Report Card: Writing 2002
National Center for Education StatisticsJuly 2003
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Apples to Apples: An Evaluation of Charter Schools Serving General Student Populations
Jay P. Greene, Greg Forster, and Marcus A. Winters, Manhattan InstituteJuly 2003
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School Choice 2003: How States Are Providing Greater Opportunity in Education
Krista KaferThe Heritage FoundationMay 2003
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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.
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Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge: The Secretary's Second Annual Report on Teacher Quality
This is the second of the annual teacher quality reports that the Secretary of Education is required by No Child Left Behind to submit to Congress. Like last year's, the news in this report is mixed. Thirty-five states have linked their teacher certification requirements to student content standards; six are in the process of doing so.
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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.
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The teacher as civic agitator
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.
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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.
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Reforming Relationships: School Districts, External Organizations, and Systemic Change
The driving premise behind this Annenberg funded report is this: Districts need help in meeting the student achievement goals now being established by state and federal policies.
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Prepared to Make a Difference: The National Commission on Excellence in Elementary Teacher Preparation for Reading Instruction
International Reading Association2003
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The State of District charters
Last week the Washington Post ran a two-part series (by Justin Blum and Jay Mathews) on the state of D.C. charter schools. It's a good summary of how the schools are doing compared to traditional public schools (mixed) and the effect they're having on the D.C. school system (scant).
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Bloomberg gives up on English language immersion
One of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg's grand campaign promises was a pledge to reform bilingual education.
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Special ed: close, but no reform
Special ed reform is in the air. The House has passed and the Senate has introduced bills to overhaul the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
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