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CEOs see the need for standards
National standards and tests are no longer desired by just a select group of policy wonks-some of the country's most powerful business leaders are on board, too.
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Stretching Minds and Resources: 20 Years of Post Secondary Enrollment Options in Minnesota
Joe Nathan, Laura Accomando, and Debra Hare FitzpatrickCenter for School ChangeDecember 2005
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Test mess
The College Board, the Educational Testing Service, Pearson Educational Measurement, and the rest of them should be ashamed of-and held accountable for-the recent spate of screw-ups in SAT scoring, as well as the less-visible but recurrent delays and glitches in
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Art class draws students
In response to "No Cartoon Controversy," Gadfly asks whether Higher Ground (HG), a St. Paul charter public school is challenging the common school ideal. The school adapted art lessons so that Muslim parents and students are more comfortable with them. HG is meeting Minnesota state standards in art.
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A tale of three cities
Charismatic Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is ready to shake up his city's beleaguered schools, and he's looking to Chicago and New York for lessons. He even took a field trip to the Big Apple this week, meeting with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein to explore the potential and perils of mayoral control of schools.
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Unschooled parents
There's more than one way to skin a Badger. So when the Wisconsin Education Association lost its initial legal battle to close the state's first cyberschool (the WEA said the school violated Wisconsin charter and open enrollment laws) it took another tack.
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International lessons for the gulf coast
The Harvard Educational Review hit upon a novel idea recently when its editors proposed that America should look to the international community for guidance in delivering education to the roughly 370,000 students displaced by hur
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Honk if you see me
Chicagoans love their car horns, and it's not just because the city's drivers are among the rudest in the nation. It's because they're scared to death of blind drivers. That's right-blind drivers.
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The art of the possible
While some unimaginative sorts still argue that national standards and tests are politically infeasible, former John Kerry campaign aide Robert Gordon makes the case that a bipartisan coalition could turn the idea into re
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Elite flyer
In many respects, the Charter School of Wilmington should make the charter school movement proud. It is considered the "flagship" of the Delaware public education system, and it posts the state's highest SAT scores and a nearly perfect college matriculation rate.
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Why can't learning disabled students read?
Americans are generally supportive of "special education." Educating disabled children so they can live independent, satisfying lives appeals to our sense of fairness and shared responsibility.
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Selection bias
Democratic gubernatorial candidates in Oregon just aren't what they used to be-at least in the eyes of the Oregon Education Association. The teachers union spent Saturday auditioning six likely contenders for the Governor's Mansion, but decided to delay its endorsement because none of the six made a match as the union's candidate.
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Judicial smackdown
The tough-talking judge who decided a school funding case four years ago by ruling that North Carolina law requires high-quality public education, now says he's tired of waiting for consistently lagging high schools to improve.
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My momma told me, you'd better shop around
Low-income African-American families are fleeing Minneapolis public schools en masse, reports Katherine Kersten on the Op-Ed page of the Wall Street Journal.
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Counterinsurgency in California
Districts and charters disagree all the time, and the battles can often turn nasty. But a coup? Last Tuesday, district officials from Sacramento Unified (and their security guards) arrived at the campus of the city's Visual and Performing Arts Charter School (VAPAC) and placed the principal and office manager on administrative leave.
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Damocles swordplay
Oh, Canada. Our northern neighbor's supreme court recently ruled that students may now carry swords to public schools-but only if those swords are called "kirpans" and the students are orthodox Sikhs.
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The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts
Civic Enterprises John M. Bridgeland, John J. DiIulio, and Karen B. MorrisonMarch 2006
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Primary Progress, Secondary Challenge: A State-by-State Look at Student Achievement Patterns
Daria Hall and Shana KennedyThe Education Trust March 2006
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No vendor left behind
A Seussian circus descended on Sacramento last week, but center ring wasn't the state's infamously rancorous capitol building. It was the convention center, where more than 3,000 charter school leaders and supporters arrived for four days of panels, meet-and-greets, and keynote addresses-including one by The Terminator, who dropped by on Wednesday morning.
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Obstacles on the route from high school to college
For most Americans, the transition from high school to college today is as chancy and vexing as crossing a bridge over a river where builders on one bank have ignored what those on the other are doing. Only the fortunate will be able to make it across.
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Governor's Core Initiative Deserves Support
If our students are to be prepared for the rigors of college and the workplace, high school curricula must be toughened. That's Governor Taft's thought, and he has a plan (the Governor's Core Initiative) to do just that. You?d think all Buckeyes would agree.
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Within Our Reach
By Dale Patrick Dempsey American education stands at a crossroads. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 has the potential to have as big an impact on the quality of education in America as Brown vs. the Board of Education had on equality in education. Or not.
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Notes from the National Charter School Conference in Sacramento
I had the good fortune of attending the National Charter Schools Conference in Sacramento last week with 3,600 other school reformers, including some 80 who hailed from Ohio.
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Kindergarten cop-out
Readers learn from a Los Angeles Times op-ed that all is not well with the kindergarten set. Meet Ricky, whose Mommy is worried because her son is being forced to write his name, not only in capital letters, but with a mixture of the upper and lower cases. It gets worse. Ricky’s mom is alarmed that kindergarten is becoming “a 30-hour-a-week job.
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Michael S. Joyce, in memoriam
Michael Joyce, who died earlier this week at the too-young age of 63, was one of the most influential, if least visible, figures in education philanthropy and reform during the last quarter of the twentieth century. As head of the John M.
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Getting Choice Right: Ensuring Equity and Efficiency in Education Policy
Julian R. Betts and Tom Loveless, EditorsBrookings Institution Press2005
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Tele-smarties?
The prevailing wisdom is that TV is no friend of education. (They don't call it the "Idiot Box" for nothing, right?) But two economists from the University of Chicago conducted a study and found that TV-watching makes "very little difference and if anything, a slight positive advantage" in student test scores.