There they go again
Now that the Supreme Court has ruled against the Louisville and Seattle school districts, race-based student assignment policies are mostly illegal. Superintendents around the nation are now seeking other ways to maintain social diversity in their hallways and classrooms.
The Learning Season: The Untapped Power of Summer to Advance Student Achievement and Lasting Consequences of the Summer Learning Gap
Coby LoupBeth M. MillerNellie Mae Education FoundationJune 2007and Karl L. Alexander, Doris R. Entwisle, and Linda Steffel OlsonAmerican Sociological ReviewApril 2007
Left Behind By Design: Proficiency Counts and Test-Based Accountability
Derek Neal and Diane Whitmore SchanzenbachNational Bureau of Economic ResearchJuly 2007
You Bet Your Life
The National Education Association isn't getting much love these days from Washington, D.C., or Washington State. Last month, the union's Evergreen State affiliate, the W.E.A., was told by a unanimous U.S.
Separate but constitutional
Ohio's ACLU has been slamming the Cleveland School District for its plan to open five new same-sex schools this fall. But will the threatened lawsuit hold constitutional water? Doubtful. The U.S.
She wants answers
Detroit's new superintendent, Connie Calloway, garnered cheers from the crowd at a school board meeting last week when she said, "Charter schools mean suicide for public schools." It's an odd statement.
Gadfly's emanations and penumbras
In "Pleasure, beauty, and wonder" (July 12), Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, states, "We need a system that grounds all students in pleasure, beauty, and wonder." Missing is any definition of the terms pleasure, beauty, and wonder.
Down but not out
Speaking of throwing: "The sun don't shine on the same dog's ass every day." So said Jim "Catfish" Hunter, one of baseball's greatest closers, after giving up a home-run to lose a World Series game in 1974. And it appears, sadly, that the sun has finally set on KIPP Harbor Academy in Anne Arundel County, Maryland.
Abstinence comes with a price
Lesson to kids: Chastity can cost you $24,000. That's about how much 16-year-old Lydia Playfoot (or her parents) will have to pay in court costs, now that she's lost a case against school administrators who made her remove her chastity ring. Millais School in Horsham, West Sussex, claims that wearing the ring violated its dress code; Lydia claims that Millais School violated her human rights.