Commentary
Charter School of Hard Knocks
The state’s first “conversion” charter school, Dayton’s World of Wonder (WOW), apparently decided it had been out in the cold for too long.
Topics
Commentary
From One Librarian to Another
On June 5, the Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries announced grant awards of up to $5,000 for 206 schools across the nation to develop or expand their library collections. Two of the seven charter school recipients were Ohio’s very own Dayton View Academy and the Early Childhood Development Center in Cleveland.
Commentary
Test tubes
Education Week recently reported that, though the 2005 Science NAEP exam showed more low-achieving 4th grade students scoring at the "basic" level, results are stagnant or worse in all grades at the "proficient" and "advanced" levels. What does that mean?
Commentary
10,000 Lakes love
I generally avoid blogs, podcasts and the like. But I was drawn by the text version of last week’s print Gadfly to the The Education Gadfly Show, and couldn’t help but notice the over-representation of my home state of Minnesota.
Commentary
Spicy Chile
Chile's country-wide education protests are now over. The fallout from the three-week crucible that saw nearly 800,000 students take to Chile's streets (sometimes violently), however, will not be soon forgotten. The walkouts began innocently enough, with students asking the government to provide free bus passes and to waive university entrance exam fees.
Commentary
Why American Students Do Not Learn to Read Very Well: The Unintended Consequences of Title II and Teacher Testing
Sandra StotskyThird Education Group ReviewVol. 2, No. 2, 2006
Commentary
Key Issues in Studying Charter Schools and Achievement: A Review and Suggestions for National Guidelines
The Charter School Achievement Consensus Panel; Julian Betts and Paul T. Hill, Principal DraftersCenter on Reinventing Public EducationMay 2006
Commentary
Teaching Inequality: How Poor and Minority Students Are Shortchanged on Teacher Quality
Heather G. Peske and Kati HaycockThe Education TrustJune 2006
Commentary
Lose a mile, give an inch
Give them credit for progress-even if it's painfully incremental. In a decidedly uncharacteristic move, the Washington D.C. Teachers' Union approved a new contract that will introduce bonus incentives for teachers and give principals more autonomy at a handful of pilot schools.
Commentary
Buzz kill
A new front has opened in the cell phone wars. In a ring tone realm once ruled by Fur Elise and the latest jam from 50 Cent (aka Fiddy), a new craze has taken center stage-"Teen Buzz," the almost-silent cell phone alert.
Commentary
Friendly advice
Editor's note: Last week's issue, especially the News and Analysis, generated a number of letters; we've included two, both from Minnesota.
Commentary
Condition of education 2006
The National Center for Education Statistics doesn't always do right by its annual "Condition of Education" report (COE), which has sometimes been humdrum and sometimes dizzy from pro-administration spin.
Commentary
Group think
In last Sunday's New York Times, Jeffrey Rosen, a well-known legal scholar, wrote a longish article related to the Supreme Court's decision to hear tw
Commentary
World history, lost in translation
For young Americans in 2006 world history must no longer be seen as an elective subject. Everyone needs to be conversant with the history, culture, and geography of the flattening world they inhabit.
Commentary
Erasing race?
The Supreme Court this week agreed to hear two cases-one from Seattle, the other from Kentucky-that will decide the extent to which race can affect the assignment of students to public schools. In each case, white parents argue that districts' desire to maintain racial balance in classrooms led to discriminatory policies in their public school choice programs.
Commentary
Premature judgment
Despite all the advantages afforded by highly educated parents, by living in a home that values the written word, by siblings who read and cherish books, at age six my youngest son leaves kindergarten this year unable to read. What does this say about his future?
Commentary
Hot Air: How States Inflate Their Educational Progress Under NCLB
Kevin CareyEducation SectorMay 2006
Commentary
IB America
It has been called fuzzy. Some even label it a United Nations plot. It's the International Baccalaureate (IB) program, and it's ruffling feathers in Minnesota and around the nation. Created in Switzerland in 1968, the IB curriculum emphasizes rigorous global standards and self-motivated learning. But not everyone is pleased with its planetary flavor.
Commentary
CA drop-kicks the prop
On Tuesday, California voters issued a resounding rejection to actor/director Rob Reiner's Proposition 82. That much discussed ballot item (see here) would have taxed the uber-rich in order to finance universal pre-school for Golden State 4-year-olds.
Commentary
Cookie monster
"Jeremy Maitland took a cookie from the cookie jar." So begins this tale of woe from Richmond, Virginia, where the Henrico County Public Schools suspended young Mr.
Commentary
Gumbo gumption
What do you call a re-opened school in New Orleans? Most likely, you call it a charter school, John Merrow reported last week on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Most of the 12,000 students who have returned to the city (out of a pre-hurricane public school population of 60,000) find themselves in charters.
Commentary
The State of State World History Standards
Harvey Pennick, the late, great Texas golf instructor, once wrote: “If you don’t have a good grip, you don’t want a good swing.” Ohio finds itself in a similar situation in its teaching of world history.
Commentary
Promise and Perils of a Data-Driven Future
Is data collection and technology really revolutionizing classroom instruction?
Commentary
Choosing a School: A New Guide
The education scene in Ohio is brimming with options. But how do parents know which school is best for their children? GreatSchools, a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, has produced a valuable workbook to help parents in the Dayton area answer that question.
Commentary
Initial Lessons from W.E.B. DuBois in Cincinnati
On May 27, the Cincinnati Enquirer ran a front page story announcing that the board of the state’s top performing charter school—the W.E.B. DuBois Academy—had voted to close the school due to serious financial problems. As the school’s sponsor, the Thomas B.
Commentary
Haycock's Hope
On May 10 in Columbus, Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, spoke before a packed room of over 300 educators, legislators, philanthropists, business leaders and reporters with a message of hope for Ohio’s schools. If you were unable to elbow your way through the crowd to see her presentation, check it out
Report
Standards
The State of State World History Standards 2006
Is America's K-12 education system preparing students for life in a global village? Unfortunately, it is not. Renowned historian Walter Russell Mead, author of this report, found that thirty-three states deserved D or F grades for their world history standards.
Commentary
No diploma, no GED, no problem!
Nationwide, fully 2 percent (400,000) of college students never finished high school. A few schools even cater to the dropout crowd. Ninety-four percent of students at Interboro Institute in Manhattan, for example, carry that dubious title. It's a hot-button issue in New York, because these students are still eligible for state financial aid. Governor George Pataki thinks that's a problem.
Commentary
Bad schools : SAT scores :: reality television : American culture
Colleges are reporting that this year's SAT results were significantly lower than those of years past. A problem with the test? Is poor Susie fatigued by the new writing portion? David Kahn, head of a private tutoring company in New York City, doesn't think so.
Commentary
Reading first
The No Child Left Behind Act makes no bones about the primacy of reading. According to Bloomberg News, a forthcoming NCES report shows that schools are responding to the law's signals by boosting the instructional time in reading while reducing it in everything else, at least in grades 1-4.