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Christmas in September
Early this week, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue closed the Peach State's schools for two days in anticipation of an oil shortage caused by Hurricane Rita—a shortage that never happened.
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Next steps in Norfolk
Norfolk Public Schools finally brought home the big one - the $500,000 Broad Prize for Urban Education. A bridesmaid in the competition each year from 2002 to 2004, the district took top honors this year based on the strength of increased reading and math scores, improved graduation rates, and significant reduction in ethnic achievement gaps.
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The Governor's Commission on Quality Education in Maryland
As a Marylander who hasn't done much for his state, I was honored to serve on this commission, which was appointed by Governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and chaired by Lt. Governor Michael S. Steele.
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Three cheers for Madigan
Dr. Kathy Madigan is stepping down as president of the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE) effective September 30, 2005. During her four-year tenure, Madigan's leadership was instrumental in developing ABCTE's Passport to Teaching program, which has become the "premier national alternative route to the teaching profession." Gadfly wishes Dr.
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Trading places
Last week the Toledo Blade reported that Toledo Public Schools Superintendent Eugene Sanders interviewed for the top executive position at New Schools of Detroit, a nonprofit created in August by the Skillman Foundation of Michigan to oversee new charter schools in the area.
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Of minivans and charter schools
An article in the September 12th edition of the Indianapolis Star (not available online) reported that the Hoosier State's charter schools are starting to sprout in the leafy suburbs. Similar news came out of Minnesota last summer. Is this a trend?
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Blind hogs and behaviorist laws
"Even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while," quoth the late Russell Long (D-LA), longtime chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. And so it is with the customarily education-blind New York Times editorial page, which unearthed a back-to-school acorn of wisdom on September 6.
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No surrender
Though both my father and I have several shortcomings, neither of us has much trouble speaking for ourselves. I know enough not to try to speak for Dad. So let me, finally, speak for myself concerning two recent Gadfly writings.
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A poor disposition
It is welcome to hear that the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) does not sanction ideological indoctrination. (See Arthur E.
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Playing the Blaine game
Only a thoroughgoing grinch, one might suppose, would find fault with the Bush administration's proposal to help all Katrina kids find a safe place to go to school this year. The administration will offer up to $7,500 per displaced student to cover education costs.
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Sandra Feldman, in memoriam
Sandra Feldman was a brilliant and dedicated teacher unionist. From her earliest days in the civil rights movement, she exhibited intelligence, courage, and leadership. She was one of Albert Shanker's closest associates, and she shared his passion for democracy and civil rights.
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Education Myths: What Special Interest Groups Want You to Believe about Our Schools - And Why It Isn't So
Jay GreeneRowman & Littlefield2005
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Left behind in L.A.
Los Angeles's poor students aren't getting a lot of love. An Education Trust - West report shows that the Los Angeles Unified School District's most experienced teachers tend to work in higher-paying, less-troubled schools in the city's more affluent areas. No surprise there. According to the report, LAUSD's "seniority bumping rights" policy is partly to blame.
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Solving the Charter School Funding Gap: The Seven Major Causes and What to Do About Them
Center for Education Reform2005
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Walking tall in Philly
Philadelphia Superintendent Paul Vallas stands tall (and not only because his height exceeds 6'5"). In this age, school superintendents are hired, sacked and traded as capriciously as professional athletes, but Vallas has a knack for sticking with the home team, explains Alan Greenblatt in his excellent Governing Magazine profile.
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Tallyho, achievement!
The conservative Tory party has long supported parental choice as the best method to elevate student achievement. This explains why the party has backed the City Academies Program launched by Labor's Tony Blair, which draws on community sponsors (business, faith-based, and individual) to replace decaying urban schools.
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Fie on Middle Schoolism
If ever an education fad showed dreadful timing, reaching its intellectual and political pinnacle just as lightning struck the mountaintop, it's "middle schoolism." The key year was 1989, when the middle school bible, an influential Carnegie-backed report named Turning Points, was published.
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A is for arugula
Move over Jean Georges. There's a new "it" destination for haute cuisine in the Big Apple, and it's a place where vocal food critics are decidedly personae non gratae. Get caught turning up your nose, and you just might have to go to the back of the line.
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Fordham language regarding NCATE simply wrong
The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation's inflammatory introduction to William Damon's article in the Gadfly's September 8 issue is simply wrong. It said that "policymakers might reconsider whether being accredited by NCATE is evidence of quality or something far more sinister."
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Delivering on the Promise of the 95 Percent Reading and Math Goals
Lynn Fielding, Nancy Kerr, and Paul Rosier, New Foundation Press2004
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Out of commission
What do the Amistad Commission, the Holocaust Commission, and the Italian Commission have in common? They all want a piece of the public school curriculum.
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SES Tutoring Programs: An evaluation of the second year - Part one of a two part report
Chicago Public Schools, Office of Research, Evaluation, and AccountabilityAugust 2005
Report
Accountability & Testing, Curriculum & Instruction
Mayhem in the Middle: How middle schools have failed America, and how to make them work
American middle schools have become the places "where academic achievement goes to die." So says Cheri Yecke, K-12 Education Chancellor of Florida and author of the new Fordham report Mayhem in the Middle: How middle schools have failed America, and how to make them work. Today's middle schools have succumbed to a concept of "middle schoolism" in which a strong academic curriculum is traded for one that focuses more on emotional and social development, and less on learning the basics. And the achievement data reflects "middle schoolism's" results. In 1999, U.S. eighth graders scored nine points below average on the TIMSS assessment of math. What's more, these same eighth graders had outperformed the average by 28 points as fourth graders in 1995! According to Fordham President Chester E. Finn, Jr., "Trying to fix high schools while ignoring middle schools is like bandaging a wound before treating it for infection."
Report
Accountability & Testing, Teachers & School Leaders
Personality Test: The dispositional dispute in teacher preparation today, and what to do about it
The standards of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Excellence (NCATE) are of critical import for America's future teaching corps and will wield disproportionate influence for decades to come. Over the past fifteen years, 25 states have outsourced the approval of teacher preparation programs to NCATE by adopting or adapting its standards as their own; the other 25 have various 'partnerships' with the organization. Which makes it all the more disturbing that central to these standards is the call for teachers to possess certain 'dispositions' such as particular attitudes toward 'social justice.' As Professor William Damon of Stanford University explains in Fordham's latest Fwd: Arresting Insights in Education, NCATE's framing of the 'dispositions' issue has given education schools 'unbounded power over what candidates may think and do.' This is leading to (understandable) charges of ideological arm-twisting and Orwellian mind-control.
Commentary
Tyranny of the minority
Slate's Michael Kinsley once said that "a gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth." Well, Rafe Esquith is no politician (though we'd vote for him in a heartbeat; as a 5th grade teacher in Los Angeles he's been producing near-miraculous results with his charges for two decades), and his truth-telling was far from an accident, yet it's startling all the same: "Some children
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After the storm
Last week, Americans watched in horror as governments at all levels failed to provide the basic necessities for our fellow citizens; this week Americans watched with pride as educators at all levels sprung into action to help cope with the human devastation in Katrina's wake.
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When rote equals rot
Jonathan Kozol has spent decades hunting for inequities in American education, and his tune - which is 99 percent off key - hasn't changed much over the years.
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Who you callin' a capuchin?
It's a bit shocking to read that almost two-thirds of Americans recently told a poll-taker that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools. Forty-two percent of respondents self-identified as creationists and almost certainly voted in favor of teaching the idea. But how does one explain the others who voiced support?
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