In 1994, the Lake View (AR) school district - a tiny, rural district with declining enrollment and a high proportion of poor and minority students - sued Arkansas, arguing that the state's system of education finance was inequitable.
According to a new report from the Capital Research Center - penned by Education Intelligence Agency sleuth Mike Antonucci (see http://members.aol.com/educationintel/) - an organization you've heard of "files unfair labor practice charges and restraining orders. Circumvents the other side's negotiators.
National Center for Education Statistics June 2004
When I learned recently that the Council for Basic Education had closed its doors, I felt terribly sad. According to an article in Education Week, some attributed its demise to a "tight fund-raising environment for education groups" and suggested that CBE had expired because it was swimming in a crowded pond.
On Tuesday, the Democratic Convention adopted a platform containing a 3-page education plank that offers something for everybody, but nothing in particular, save for a pointed 3-paragraph dig at George W. Bush. Insofar as one can detect policy impulses in the fog, however, many of them resemble what Republicans also say.
Gadfly is pleased to report the results of a recent study, to be published in Psychological Science this fall, comparing the effectiveness of "direct instruction" (where teachers actually teach, rather than observe or facilitate) and "discovery learning" (where children are given certain materials and are expe
In the New York Sun, Andy Wolf reports that "virtually all schools [in New York City] received budget cuts that in some cases exceeded 20 percent," despite an increase of $264 million in total funding for Gotham's public schools in 2004-05. Where did the money go?
Jay Mathews's latest column at washingtonpost.com offers selections from emails he received after confessing his "deep ignorance about the home-schooling movement" earlier this summer. He makes it clear that the stereotype of home schoolers - usually depicted as fundamentalist or right-wing zealots - doesn't bear much relation to reality.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make any noise? If the nation's governors talk about education reform yet it has no effect on what they do, do the words matter? That's the question that arises from the just-concluded summer meeting of the National Governors Association.
Treat yourself to two fascinating features in the Chicago Tribune about a young girl who takes advantage of the NCLB transfer option to move to a new school on the North Side.
We earlier reported that Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney had vetoed a one-year moratorium on new charter schools, but that it looked like the General Assembly would have the two-thirds majority needed to overturn Romney's veto.
Sol Stern pens a long article in City Journal on the Bush education agenda and why the President deserves the moniker "Education President." It's interesting to note, Stern recounts, that time and again opponents of various Bush initiatives seemed nonplussed (to say the least) to discover that the administration actually meant what it said.
State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) 2004The State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) produced this 92-page fact book dealing with the finances of higher education at the state level in 2003. It offers lots of important and sometimes counterintuitive information. For example:
U.S. Department of Education Office of the Under Secretary 2004
More challenges loom for Hizzoner Bloomberg's controversial bid to require third graders to pass reading and math tests before advancing to the next grade (see Gadfly, Volume 4, Number 7).
The New York legislature may well have overstepped its bounds this week when it passed a bill that would limit state and city universities from using the SAT or other "high-stakes tests" as major criteria for acceptance into the schools.
Harold C. Doran and Lance T. Izumi, Pacific Research InstituteJune 2004
