This week, the Washington Post looks at Finland's highly-ranked public school system, which "graduates nearly every young person from vocational or high school, and sends nearly half of them on to higher education," and gained national attention after a first place ranking on PISA (see here for m
As everyone knows, last week the Yale Child Study Center issued a report indicating that pre-schoolers are three times more likely to be "expelled" from their programs than K-8 children are to be expelled from school.
In the current Policy Review, David Davenport and Jeffrey Jones discuss the politics of literacy and its transformation from a local education issue to its current role in national public policy.
Maris A. Vinovskis, University of Chicago Press2005
Greg J. Duncan and Katherine A. Magnuson, The Future of Children, pp. 35-54Spring 2005
Two great charter school stories this week. In New York City, recent tests that showed increases in proficiency rates citywide (see here) also showed charter schools outscoring their traditional public school peers.
The Washington Unified School District in Sacramento wants to attract high-quality teachers to work in its worst schools. So it plans to pay those teachers more. (Governor Schwarzenegger has proposed something similar statewide.) This is a rather pedestrian practice in the real (meaning, non-education) world. So, of course, the local union is outraged.
U.S. Department of EducationApril 2005
United States Department of Education, Office of Innovation and ImprovementMarch 2005
A new report from the Yale University Child Study Center (see here) finds that pre-Kindergarten students are being expelled from their programs at rates much higher than students in K-12 are expelled from school.
The Christian Science Monitor reports a resurgence of interest in spelling in American classrooms, a subject which, according to author and spelling zealot Richard Gentry, was dealt a setback by whole-language instruction in the 1980s.
California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is bent on ending teacher tenure as we know it. If legislators won't budge, he's gathered signatures to put it on the ballot and let voters decide. "If they don't do their job," quoth the Gubernator, "then we go to special election without any doubt."
Given Gadfly's many doubts about Mayor Michael Bloomberg's education efforts (see "A rush to judgment?"), we pondered how to present the news that proficiency scores for Big Apple fourth graders have jumped 10 percent this year (accompanied by a slight dip among eighth graders).
The Kansas State Board of Education has just wrapped up its evolution trial. Proponents of "intelligent design" have pushed the state to present a "more critical" view of evolution in Kansas classrooms and to move away from the definition of science in the state standards as a search for "natural explanations," which they say represents an endorsement of naturalism and atheism.
Gregg Vanourek, Charter School Leadership Council May 2005
J. Carl Setzer, Laurie Lewis, and Bernard Greene, National Center for Education StatisticsMarch 2005
Bible Literacy ProjectMay 2005
Much has been said about the specious nature of official high school graduation rates promulgated by states, districts, and the feds (see here for Jay Greene's February 2005 report on the subject). The message is beginning to take hold.
Bruce O. Boston, America Youth Policy Forum and Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development2005
Michael Moore is the master of the subtle conspiracy charge, wherein a cabal is alleged with winks, nods, and innuendos without actually being stated. CNN has learned the lesson well. The cable network is airing a special on high-stakes testing (it premiered May 8 and will be shown again May 14).
An article in this week's Time accurately lays out the crucial battle taking place between the Feds and the states over NCLB.
Newsweek's annual ranking of America's best high schools (using the system devised by Washington Post education writer Jay Mathews) is out, alerting readers to some high-performing but relatively unknown schools. Top dog this year is Jefferson County International Baccalaureate in Irondale, Alabama, which is acclaimed for its rigorous college-prep courses.
In Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, Diane Ravitch criticizes Big Apple Mayor Michael Bloomberg's education policies and chronicles his tumultuous tenure.
Gerard Robinson, Institute for the Transformation of LearningApril 2005
ACT and The Education TrustFebruary 2005
Energy, enterprise, and ardor overflowed the hotel at the annual hootenanny of the New Schools Venture Fund, held last week near Silicon Valley.
Anyone who has seen a student suffering from senioritis could have predicted the findings of this latest survey of high school students. An Indiana University study shows that a majority of high school students (55 percent) spend no more than three hours a week studying yet are still managing to maintain good grades (65 percent).
No matter what you think of Florida's package of school reforms over the past several years (See here for our analysis of the latest piece, the Voluntary Pre-K program) one has to be astonished at the deftness with which Governor Jeb Bush has moved his schools agenda (which seems to be working, see
