Topics

An Evaluation of Florida's Program to End Social Promotion

Jay Greene & Marcus Winters, The Manhattan InstituteDecember 2004

The Effects of Class Size on Attainment and Classroom Processes in English Primary Schools (Years 4 to 6) 2000-2003

Institute of Education, University of LondonDecember 2004

Rocky mountain high-er education

Is the NEA changing its stripes?

Perhaps it's just a straw in the wind. Possibly it was even a mistake, a misstatement awaiting retraction. There's ample reason to describe NEA president Reg Weaver as a follower, not a leader, a perpetuator of the status quo rather than an innovator.

Grading the UK report cards

While No Child Left Behind requires states to issue school report cards, ostensibly to let parents know how their child's school is doing, we should observe our neighbors across the pond. "School league tables" were introduced a decade ago in Britain to offer an easy way to compare the academic achievement of different schools.

Guided discovery of routinized opinions

Gadfly does not try to note every expression of pedagogical silliness out there - otherwise, he'd do nothing else! But once in while you have to stop and smell the skunk cabbage. This week, Alison Gopnik, a professor of psychology and author of a book on learning styles, had a column in the New York Times so absurd as to be noteworthy. Dr.

No Child Left Behind Act: Education Needs to Provide Additional Technical Assistance and Conduct Implementation Studies for School Choice Provision

United States Government Accountability OfficeDecember 2004

Do What Works: How Proven Practices Can Improve America's Public Schools

Tom Luce and Lee Thompson, Ascent Education Press2005

Twentysomething and still a kid?

Are today's twentysomethings spoiled, coddled brats who sponge off their parents and wander aimlessly through an entertainment-addled existence? Or do they face unusual challenges that make it difficult to follow the time-honored high school-college-adulthood script? Both assertions were on view this week.

Aristocracy rising

Income inequality in the U.S., the Economist warns, "is growing to levels not seen since the Gilded Age, around the 1880s.

Road maps of charterland

You may be confused by the dueling charter school studies that have appeared in recent months. If so, two new articles try to beam a light through that tangled forest.

Revisiting Statewide Educational Accountability under NCLB

Ellen Forte Fast and William J. Erpenbach, Council of Chief State School Officers2004

Stalled in Secondary: A Look at Student Achievement Since the No Child Left Behind Act

The Education TrustJanuary 2005

Achieving State and National Literacy Goals, a Long Uphill Road

RAND Education2004

Dovrat back to the drawing board

The recommendations of a national panel looking at fixes to the ailing Israeli K-12 education system has the entire country up in arms.

Math standards don't add up

Two decades after the U.S. was deemed "a nation at risk," academic standards for our primary and secondary schools are more important than ever - and their quality matters enormously.

Merit pay in CA?

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his State of the State address, has declared his intention to promote merit-based pay for Golden State teachers.

1965 & 2005

Why it seems like only yesterday. . . . Oops, sorry, this is not to be a sappy reminiscence by an aging fogey. (Well, aging, maybe.) But in greeting 2005, I want to explain some momentous changes these past four decades, for American education and for me.

2005 battle lines drawn in states

It's a new year and new fights loom in state legislatures. In Utah, buoyed by a study suggesting that it might save $1.2 billion in K-12 costs by allowing students to enroll in private schools, proponents plan to push a tuition tax credit plan. But they've got the state's biggest newspaper, the Salt Lake Tribune, against them, as well as the teacher unions.

A diversity of perversity

College and university campuses across the country claim to be bastions of diversity, where students of every sort come together to learn, socialize and solve the great issues of the day.

Private schooling for the poor booms in India

We've heard plenty about the outsourcing of American jobs to "Asian Tiger" economies and about the swell of graduate students from other countries (India especially) coming to the U.S. to take high-tech and research positions.

Quality Counts 2005

Education WeekJanuary 5, 2005

All Work and No Play? Listening to What Kids Really Want from Out-of-School Time

Public AgendaNovember 16, 2004

The Expectations Gap: A 50-State Review of High School Graduation Requirements

Achieve, Inc. 2004  

Literature left behind

Two decades after being diagnosed as "a nation at risk," academic standards for U.S. primary and secondary schools are more important than ever-and the quality of those standards matters enormously.

High school reform on deck

As Checker Finn noted last month, "the NEXT BIG THING in education reform is a serious focus on high school." (Click here for more.) Among the bipartisan chorus calling for high school reform are a few who ascribe America's staggering college drop-out problem to inadequacies in the high schools.