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Commentary
10.19.2005

Charter schools rising

Even as Education Secretary Margaret Spellings and President Bush were struggling to shine the best possible light on (the mostly disappointing) 2005 NAEP scores (The Nation's Report Card), charter school supporters have reason to celebrate.

Commentary
10.12.2005

Today's lunch? Perfectly offal.

Those who lament the often sorry state of American public education may content themselves with this Pyrrhic victory: American students don't eat raw innards at school, at least not yet. The word out of New Zealand, however, is that that country's students do, indeed, feast upon entrails in the classroom.

Commentary
10.12.2005

Unintended, but consequential

Talk about your unintended consequences. The No Child Left Behind Act made performance test scores transparent so that parents could make good decisions about their children's education and could put pressure on schools to pay attention to the needs of all of their students. The law's writers couldn't have foreseen pupils using the test scores to berate one another.

Commentary
10.12.2005

End of reform in Gotham?

Sol Stern

When negotiations over a new labor contract between New York City's public school system and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) got under way last year, Joel Klein went straight for the jugular. Schools chancellor Klein looked intent on slaying the dragon of obstructionist teacher unionism right in its birthplace.

Commentary
10.12.2005

Lefties for charters

Mayor Nagin isn't the only Democrat showing signs of interest in charter schools. The Los Angeles Times profiles Green Dot charter schools founder (and "Rock the Vote" creator) Steve Barr and his campaign to take over a struggling high school in L.A. Who are his strongest opponents?

Commentary
10.12.2005

Charters for New Orleans?

Good news is hard to come by in New Orleans these days, but this might qualify: the Orleans Parish's school board has agreed to charter all 13 schools in the city's West Bank.

Commentary
10.12.2005

Counting on faith

Strong self-esteem and personal ambition aren't lacking in American high school students, but the developed intellectual capacity to achieve those ambitions often is. A new study by the U.S.

Commentary
10.5.2005

The charter school ice cream parlor

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

What does the phrase "charter school" convey? A common working definition is an "independently operated public school of choice, freed from regulations but accountable for results." Yet all that such formulations of the charter school concept address are matters of structure, governance, and accountability.

Commentary
10.5.2005

Big Apple teachers get a bigger bite

This week, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and the Bloomberg administration reached agreement on a new contract for New York City public school educators (who worked without any contract for nearly two years). So who won?

Commentary
10.5.2005

Economic integration push-back

Michelle Godard Terrell

Thank you for the "schooled on class" piece, which ran in last week's Gadfly. I have lived in Wake County for the past 12 years, and my eldest child is in the county's public school system.

Commentary
10.5.2005

SOS on SES

As Paul Peterson explains in the current issue of Education Next, at the heart of No Child Left Behind's free tutoring provision is a blatant conflict of interest, even for districts "in need of improvement" that are not allowed to provide the tutoring themselves: "If parents

Commentary
10.5.2005

Maybe the dingo ate your syllabus

Australian parents worried about their children have less to fear from dingoes than from their country's schools. Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson has released a report that contravenes pie-in-the-sky notions about the Land Down Under's outcomes-based curriculum.

Commentary
9.28.2005

The shirt off their backs

First there was carnival-gate (see here), and now we have uniform-gate. Toledo requires all its public elementary and middle school students to wear uniforms. Low-income families can apply to the district for free uniforms, which are paid for by Lucas County Job and Family Services.

Commentary
9.28.2005

Put your merit pay where your mouth is

The list of high-profile political leaders who talk about merit pay for teachers keeps growing. Gadfly has already noted that New York City's school chancellor Joel Klein is a supporter. Now we can add Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney to the list.

Commentary
9.28.2005

Schooled on class

While the spike in oil prices is leading some school districts to cut back on busing (see Christmas in September, below), the New York Times has found one district that is busing more kids than ever. Wake County Public Schools, which serves Raleigh, has for five years embarked on a campaign to integrate its schools along economic lines.

Commentary
9.28.2005

Culture shock

Jim Williams

Becoming a public high school teacher after nearly 30 years in business required that I adapt to a culture whose priorities, norms, and incentives are upside down. Public schools operate in ways that conflict with their core purpose - teaching children the basic knowledge and skills required to lead successful adult lives.