Displaying 1-30 of 41 results
Commentary
4.27.2005

Lessons from San Diego

In 1998, San Diego City Schools launched one of the nation's most ambitious efforts at urban school reform. Superintendent Alan Bersin, former U.S. District Attorney for Southern California and President Clinton's "border czar," sought to reinvent the teaching and organization of the nation's eighth largest school district. In June, Bersin's stormy tenure will draw to a close.

Commentary
4.27.2005

NCLB needs a course change

Earlier this week, at an event marking the release of the new Koret Task Force volume, Within Our Reach: How America Can Educate Every Child, a key House Education Committee staff member made it clear - let us say, made it sharply clear - that No Child Left Behind would not, repeat not

Commentary
4.27.2005

Texas tech textbooks

The Texas state House has overwhelmingly approved a new bill that would dramatically alter its textbook landscape.

Commentary
4.27.2005

Animal House 101

The New York Times travels to State U and finds mega-sized classes, disengaged and anonymous students floating through their four (or increasingly four-and-a-half, or five, years of college), and an environment where books and studying have been replaced with beer bongs and "power hours" (a shot of beer every minute for an hour).

Commentary
4.27.2005

A rush to judgment?

Diane Ravitch

The selection of the New York City Department of Education as a finalist for the Broad award surprised many seasoned observers in our fair city, especially because of score declines in 2004 in some of the poorest neighborhoods.

Commentary
4.27.2005

Right time for randomized trials?

Science magazine reports that researchers worry that the Department of Education's focus on medical-style randomized controlled trials in education research is premature, since the groundwork hasn't yet been laid for applying those techniques to education. "Rushing to do RCTs is wrongheaded and bad science," Alan Schoenfeld, a math education professor at Berkeley, told the magazine.

Commentary
4.20.2005

Just the facts, ma'am

Columbia Journalism Review has a long essay in its March/April issue calling upon journalists to "get beyond" test scores in education reporting and not just accept the district or state's numbers, but also look at how numbers and policies are actually affecting the classroom.

Commentary
4.20.2005

Keep the choice provision strong

Public school choice was the great promise of NCLB. It gave students in failing schools an escape hatch and reinforced NCLB's commitment to every child by providing low-income families with options long enjoyed by more affluent families.

Commentary
4.20.2005

Class size troubles

The Florida class size amendment is causing problems again. Luckily, state schools chief John Winn is showing some useful flexibility in applying its regulations. Approximately 154,000 children are expected to enroll in Florida's new pre-kindergarten program, but the requirements of the class size amendment are causing a shortage in classroom space.

Commentary
4.20.2005

Vouchers ahead? Stay tuned

Last week, the Ohio House of Representatives passed its state budget, which included a plan to provide 18,000 vouchers for more than 30 school districts in 2006 and double that number in 2007, which would make it the largest voucher program in the country.

Commentary
4.20.2005

Retirement rip-off

Teachers, check up on your retirement plan immediately. The latest Forbes reveals that big insurance companies are peddling bad retirement plans to teachers - often with their unions' support.

Commentary
4.13.2005

Moving money

George Will examines an Arizona referendum called the "65 percent rule," which reallocates school district budgets from bureaucracy to classrooms. If passed, it would require that at least 65 percent of district operational budgets be spent directly on "in the classroom" instruction - a worthy goal.

Commentary
4.13.2005

I'll have the fish, with a side of lunacy

As students at Palm Springs Middle School were being let out for the day, they encountered a big blue fish with a simple message: Please don't eat me. Freda Fish (get it, free-da-fish?) was asking students to "Look not Hook" and handed out a pamphlet from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, "The Secret Lives of Fish." Unfortunately for Freda, the kids weren't buying it.

Commentary
4.13.2005

Textbooks and geopolitics

And you thought textbooks caused problems in the U.S. (see The Mad, Mad World of Textbook Adoption).

Commentary
4.13.2005

Disagreement in Denver

Even as negotiators announced the first concrete details of the new Denver pay for performance plan for teachers (see here for a profile of the program), its future is in jeopardy because of a looming conflict with the local union over pay, scheduling, and curricular issues.

Commentary
4.13.2005

Flexibility and NCLB

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

With dozens of states throwing toddler-style tantrums vis-??-vis NCLB's rules and expectations, the Bush Administration is offering them a "new, common sense approach" to compliance.

Commentary
4.13.2005

Ascending scale for new SAT?

Several weeks ago, we echoed The Economist in worrying that "the new SAT, with its writing requirement and junking of the analogy section, might signal a return back to something like the old WASPocracy, since it will reward students who have been rigorously coached in essay-writing" (see