Displaying 451-480 of 503 results
Commentary
2.7.2006

Making a difference

Evidence of the positive effects of charter schools appeared in two recent articles. The Dayton Daily News reported that the dropout rate in Montgomery County was cut in half between 2000 and 2005, falling from 25.6% to 12.3% That is an impressive accomplishment, and it is the result of the county’s Out of School Task Force, a network of programs linked to charter schools.

Commentary
2.7.2006

Making Choice Work in Dayton

Dayton is a leader in school choice. This city of just 165,000 residents provides families with educational options not typical of a city its size.

Commentary
2.7.2006

Following the money

As Yogi Berra once said: “You can observe a lot, just by watching.” I’ve been a reporter for 30 years, and have covered nearly every kind of story – except for education. Now that I am doing some writing and editing for the Ohio Education Gadfly, I’ll be looking at education a lot.

Commentary
2.7.2006

Learning on the Job: When business takes on public schools

In Ohio about 27,500 students currently attend schools run by for-profit and non-profit school management organizations. That number is likely to grow in coming years, so Wilson’s Learning on the Job has particular relevance to K-12 education in the Buckeye State.

Commentary
2.1.2006

WASL weasels

Washington state is again enmeshed in a testing imbroglio. Should high school seniors have to pass the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) to graduate? Neal Starkman, a Seattle Post-Intelligencer guest columnist, has a solution to appease all sides of the debate. "It's a degree for students who fail the WASL. It's the A.G.

Commentary
2.1.2006

The twilight zone

Has the trust - busting Joel Klein re-emerged to supplant the top-down know-it-all reformer? One can hope. Last month he announced that an additional 150 schools would be placed in his "autonomy zone" (besides the 58 schools there already), making them eligible for greater freedom from oversight.

Commentary
2.1.2006

South Carolina: the next Florida?

Martin A. Davis, Jr.

Floridians are keeping a watchful eye on South Carolina these days, for two reasons. First, former University of Florida coach Steve Spurrier jumped to the University of South Carolina last year and has the Gamecocks bearing down on the overrated Gators.

Commentary
2.1.2006

Bush's first- and second-term policies don't harmonize

Michael J. Petrilli, Chester E. Finn, Jr.

President Bush's revamped second-term education agenda came into sharper focus on Tuesday night: improve math and science achievement, quoth he. This quest, however, while well intended and much needed, is likely to be impeded by the chief legacy of the President's own first-term education agenda: the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

Commentary
2.1.2006

Don't fix it, just sell it!

The Boston Teachers Union is out to quash chah-dah schools using its big gun - the union contract. Its recently released 32-page contract proposal now being negotiated includes a request that the school system spend $100,000 a year to recruit charter families back to district schools.

Commentary
1.25.2006

The religion police

Christian creationists aren't the only devout Americans expressing angst over K-12 school curricula. Of late, Hindus, Jews, and Muslims have joined them. In California, for example, Hindus are pressing to change how their faith is described in state history texts.

Commentary
1.25.2006

Religion and schools

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Recently I found myself both mourning the Florida Supreme Court decision that invalidated the Sunshine State's Opportunity Scholarship (aka exit voucher) program and applauding the federal court ruling in Pennsylvania that barred intelligent design from the science classroom.

Commentary
1.25.2006

Do-it-yourself education diversifying

Time was that "diversity" in the home-school movement referred to the handful of hippies that showed up at meetings and protests along with throngs of white Christian fundamentalists. No more, says Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute. "There's an obvious ...

Commentary
1.25.2006

FERPA: As bad as it sounds

Though the Bush Administration talks nonstop about the essential role of rigorous research in informing education policy and practice (see here for example), it has made little progress removing one of the biggest barriers to such research.

Commentary
1.18.2006

Will's poor disposition

George Will has had it with ed schools and their insatiable desire to inject political bias into tomorrow's teachers. "Many education schools discourage, even disqualify, prospective teachers who lack the correct 'disposition,' meaning those who do not embrace today's 'progressive' political catechism," he writes.

Commentary
1.18.2006

School choice is for rural communities, too

Libby Sternberg

To the list of locales hosting high-profile debates over school voucher programs (e.g. Ohio, Florida, Milwaukee), you can now add the decidedly low-profile town of Westford, Vermont.

Commentary
1.18.2006

Show me the race to the bottom

When Gadfly suggested that NCLB encourages states to lower standards to make their schools look better, certain readers were critical. But the Show-Me State has shown us.

Commentary
1.18.2006

Atlanta Public Schools: On the road to recovery

Last week's editorial ("Education's Sweet Dream") inspired me to write. Over the last five years, I have worked closely with Superintendent Beverly Hall of the Atlanta School System in support of her efforts to improve student achievement at Atlanta Public Schools (APS). I was so inspired by the efforts of Dr.

Commentary
1.18.2006

Boy bandaids

What explains the chasm in achievement between boys and girls - and the decline in the percentage of males on college campuses - and why isn't anyone paying attention? Richard Whitmire, who by day writes perceptive editorials for USA Today, explores the issue in this New Republic article. Whitmire identifies poor reading skills as the major culprit.