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Earn more, learn less
Mo' money, mo' problems. Hundreds of families who benefit from Washington, D.C.'s voucher program but have enjoyed modest increases in household income are in danger of exceeding its income guidelines and having their scholarships revoked.
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Great leap backward
If you thought injecting political agendas into English and history classes was bad, we've got a doozy for you. In the latest edition of City Journal, Sol Stern writes about a nasty trend whereby progressivist professors (some of them former bomb-makers) aim to hijack not only the "softer" subjects, but hard ones such as math and science, too.
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Smart Testing: Let's Get It Right: How assessment-savvy have states become since NCLB?
American Federation of TeachersJuly 2006
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Inspection, Inspection, Inspection! How OfSTED crushes independent schools and independent teachers
Anastasia de WaalCivitasJuly 2006
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A child's garden
Robert Louis Stevenson knew that those who preach the virtues of play as work are talking about an illusion.
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A gift horse, not a Trojan horse
Whenever ed reformers put a new idea on parade, it's expected that the unions will quickly conjure up storm clouds. So it came as no surprise that, a few days after the release of Fordham's weighted student funding (WSF) proposal, the union thunder rumbled.
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The KIPP Factor
Among charter school networks having a profound impact on low-income student achievement, one stands out. The Knowledge is Power Program, or KIPP.
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The Omega School of Excellence: Starting Fresh
The Omega School of Excellence, one of Dayton's first charter schools, is breaking new ground once again. From its inception in 2000, the school's goal was to teach predominantly African-American students in grades five through eight the academic skills and attitudes they needed to gain entrance to, and successfully compete at, some of the best high schools in Dayton and beyond.
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Private Anxiety
Critics of voucher programs are positively swooning over a recent report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which finds that public school students in 4th and 8th grades score as well or better than their private-school peers.
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Echo Chamber: The National Education Association's Campaign Against NCLB
As Dick Cheney and John Edwards squared off in their pre-election debate at Case Western in 2004, three billboards in Cleveland dared the moderator to ask the candidates why taxpayers "pay $1.5 billion to label our top schools failures." The billboards, a reference to grievances against No Child Left Behind (NCLB), were paid for by Communities for Quality Education--a group financed by th
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On public and private schools
Predictably, Diana Jean Schemo and the New York Times found front-page, above-the-fold space to cover a new National Center for Education Statistics report, drawn from 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress data, that finds private schools only slightly more effective than public when anal
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Opportunity knocks
On Tuesday, four GOP lawmakers--two from the Senate (Lamar Alexander and John Ensign) and two from the House (Howard McKeon and Sam Johnson)--proposed legislation to spend $100 million on vouchers for low-income students in chronically failing schools across the nation.
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Steel City savior?
Superman has flown into Pittsburgh's public schools--and this time his name isn't Ben Roethlisberger. It's Kaplan, Inc, the $1.4 billion (with a "b") education company hired to produce curriculum for the Steel City's middle- and high-school students.
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Best Practice Studies and Institutes: Findings from 20 States
National Center for Education AccountabilityJuly 2006
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Can Harvard be punished?
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Harvard may forfeit nearly $400 million in alumni gifts this year as a consequence of ex-president Lawrence H. Summers' abrupt exit. Even for mega-bucks Harvard, that begins to qualify as real money, a palpable hit in the pocketbook--a "significant setback" in Journalese.
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Initial public offering
To compete with more lucrative private sector job options and address critical shortages, the Los Angeles Unified School District dangled a new (smallish) carrot in hopes of attracting and retaining math and science teachers. The City of Angels will bestow one-time $5,000 "incentives" on certified math and science teachers who opt for classroom over corporate positions.
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A Public Education Primer: Basic (and Sometimes Surprising) Facts about the U.S. Education System
Center on Education Policy2006
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Texas wrangler
Remember the mid-1990s, when pruning regulations and focusing on results was all the rage? Like so many education-reform movements, it's skipped town like a Texas twister.
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Winerip's last whine
We'll try to hide our grin as we note the end of Michael Winerip's education columns in the New York Times. Over the past four years, he somehow managed to travel the country reporting about K-12 education and never deviate from his initial, illogical perceptions (see here).
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Note to Mexico: Education instead of emigration
Mexico's presidential election brought a rare consensus in the U.S. press.
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The trouble with "The Trouble With Boys"
Look around you--everywhere, even on the front page of the New York Times, boys are failing. Young men are in trouble. And everyone's trying to figure out why.
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The wheels on the Lincoln go round and round
School buses have never been particularly comfortable, efficient, or hip. So how would Mickey Velilla make the morning commute easier on students? Let them take limos.
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Pirates of Canberra
Who was Captain Cook, and what did he discover? Prime Minister John Howard wants young Aussies to know this and much more, and is calling for a "root-and-branch renewal of the teaching of Australian history... and the way it is taught." Education Minister Julie Bishop tacks with him, complaining that history is currently presented in vague themes, and "squashed...
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Please stay together--for the children
Will the marriage of Paul Vallas and Philadelphia's School Reform Commission (SRC) soon end in divorce?
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Days of Reckoning: Are States and the Federal Government Up to the Challenge of Ensuring a Qualified Teacher for Every Student?
Phyllis McClure, Dianne Piché, William L. TaylorCitizens' Commission on Civil RightsJuly 2006
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Low-country spoil
Having recently returned from a conference in North Africa, I found your State of State World History Standards awaiting me.
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Social Studies in Our Nation's Elementary and Middle Schools: A National Random Survey of Social Studies Teachers' Professional Opinions, Values, and Classroom Practices
James S. Leming, Lucien Ellington, and Mark SchugCenter for Survey Research and Analysis, University of ConnecticutMay 2006
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Almost had it
Your characterization of the Education Week methodology (see here) as analyzing "the percentage of 9th graders who completed high school four years later" isn't quite correct. The formula on page 12 of the Ed Week report does, indeed, make use of dropout rates from grade
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Tempest Over Templates
In the latest adaptation of a familiar argument, Ohio Board of Education members recently discussed a proposal to create "templates" for teaching scientific topics such as evolution, stem-cell research, and cloning. Strongsville's Colleen D.