Displaying 61-90 of 441 results
Commentary
11.3.2004

Yearning for choice

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

On October 16, the New York Daily News reported that "Parents of students in failing city schools filed a class action lawsuit against the Education Department yesterday, arguing the city plans to illegally deny transfers." The suit "seeks to stop the city from denying transfers under the federal No Child Left Behind law." Said one mother (of five-year-old twins) who is party to the cl

Commentary
10.27.2004

Capping vouchers in Milwaukee

In 1998, the state of Wisconsin decided that only 15 percent of Milwaukee school children, or about 15,000 students, could receive a voucher under the city's school choice program. Now, as the city is just 100 students away from reaching this limit, a simmering debate over the merit of the voucher cap is coming to a boil.

Commentary
10.27.2004

Compromising for votes in NYC?

In a bid to better position himself going into what will be a tough election year, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg "is getting ready to trade away the education of New York City's children for a deal with Gotham's most powerful union boss, Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers." So says Ryan Sager in two recent Op-Eds in the New York Post.

Commentary
10.27.2004

The disappearance of ugliness, suspense, surprise and wonder

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Modernity and its technologies bring many pluses. We can, more or less, learn everything we want to know about everything whenever we want to know it. Thanks to the Internet, 24-hour news, blogs and e-mail, we are awash in information and communication options.We don't have to wait until the morning paper arrives to learn what happened in the world yesterday.

Commentary
10.27.2004

The Idaho charter debate

John T. Wenders

You lament that Idaho's charter schools are funded at only 60-70 percent of the per-pupil cost of the state's traditional public schools and suggest their funding be raised toward parity ("New Idaho charter rules a start").

Commentary
10.27.2004

The real meaning of NCLB

Just in time for Halloween, an update from the spook file. The blogger Bellaciao (motto: "To rebel is right, to disobey is a duty, to act is necessary!") has apparently unraveled the mystical meaning behind the No Child Left Behind act: it's a reference to the Apocalypse.

Commentary
10.27.2004

Times to charters: know your place

This is the New York Times' idea of a balanced story on charter schooling? We'd hate to see the biased story . . . oh, wait, we already did (click here).

Commentary
10.20.2004

Mr. Smith goes to Washington

The charter movement has long needed a national voice, a gap the new Charter School Leadership Council is looking to fill. And now the new voice has an old hand to lead it: Nelson Smith. We can't think of a better choice. Nelson has worked with New American Schools for several years, has experience as a federal, state, and local policy maker, is a crack researcher, and a helluva nice guy.

Commentary
10.20.2004

New Idaho charter rules a start

Out in Idaho, which came late to the charter school party (the state's charter school law was only passed in 1998), the public is being invited to comment on proposed new regulations that will significantly alter the charter scene there. They're a mixed bag.

Commentary
10.20.2004

Teacher test, 20 years and counting

In Alabama, a long and tortuous saga of teacher testing has gotten even more complicated. In 1981, the state began requiring new teachers to pass content tests in the subjects they teach. That law was challenged on grounds that it was racially discriminatory, and in 1985 the state dropped the test, though the lawsuit continued to wend its way through various courts for 15 years.

Commentary
10.20.2004

The British Diploma Project?

This week, former chief inspector of schools in England, Mike Tomlinson, released a report proposing sweeping changes to the nation's secondary-school accountability system, which currently requires students to pass achievement tests (A-levels) if they want to continue on to university. The changes would transform the A-levels into a new diploma system over the next decade.

Commentary
10.20.2004

The power of one percent

In the midst of the ongoing debate over charter schools, this week's New Yorker includes a profile of one highly successful Boston charter school - the Pacific Rim Academy - that serves as a reminder that charters, while not a panacea, offer hope that the hardest-to-teach students don't have to be left behind.

Commentary
10.20.2004

San Diego Review

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Frederick Hess, American Enterprise InstituteSeptember 2004

Commentary
10.20.2004

Not all parents are fools

The Washington Post reported on October 19 that PTA (Parent-Teacher Association) membership nationwide has fallen from 12.1 million four decades ago to fewer than six million today. Not even one in four U.S. public schools now has a PTA chapter.

Commentary
10.13.2004

Jacques Derrida, ed theorist

This weekend, French thinker Jacques Derrida, father of the literary method known as "deconstruction," died of pancreatic cancer. His wide-ranging influence on intellectual life on this planet even trickled down into K-12 education, where it has inspired some of our wackier and less responsible pedagogical theorists.

Commentary
10.13.2004

More of the same&

As part of the New York Times' all out assault on education reform this election year, the editorial board (which has yet to retract or correct its misleading editorial on the AFT charter report--click here and here for mo

Commentary
10.13.2004

How best to write well

How do you teach kids to write: through the spirit or the law? That is, should writing be taught through careful attention to grammar, syntax, and composition? Or should the first task be encouraging youngsters to pour their hearts upon the page without regard for subjects, verbs, and objects?

Commentary
10.13.2004

The new education philanthropy

There's new Europe and old Europe, and now there's the new education philanthropy and the old education philanthropy, according to Rick Hess in Philanthropy magazine. The old version focused on working within the system and making nice with school districts and assorted education interest groups - and much of it expired with Walter Annenberg's failed challenge.

Commentary
10.13.2004

Silly season in academe

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Presidential election campaigns bring out the worst in academics whose partisan yearnings overcome their scholarly scruples.