Commentary
Quantity Counts: The Growth of Charter School Management Organizations
National Charter School Research Project, University of WashingtonAugust 2007
Commentary
But I can sing!
All California asks of its twelfth-graders is to pass an exit exam (you get six tries!) that tests ninth-grade standards in reading and seventh-grade standards in math. Ninety-three percent of the class of 2007 passed it. Results from that class also showed rising success rates for African-American, Latino, and poor youngsters.
Commentary
Hip, hip, hoo-Rhee
Michelle Rhee, the District of Columbia's dynamic new schools chancellor, is already impressing parents, teachers, and the ever-cynical media with her no-nonsense style (she wants to fire bureaucrats and slim down the central office) and refreshing sense of urgency.
Commentary
The manufactured crisis
It's back-to-school season, which means it must be time for a prominent news outlet to decry the teacher-turnover "crisis." Enter the New York Times, whose front-page story quotes all the usual suspects saying all the usual things. "The problem is not mainly with retirement," explains the president of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future.
Commentary
Error prone, college bound
It is no longer sufficient for ambitious high school seniors, bent on impressing college admissions committees, to distinguish themselves through their accomplishments. Now they're being encouraged to make creative errors. Steven Roy Goodman is an independent college counselor who advises his clients to purposefully screw up their applications. "Sometimes it's a typo," he said.
Commentary
Commentary
A happy anniversary
Huzzah for Florida Virtual School (FLVS), which just turned ten! Such celebratory language is appropriate, for the Sunshine State, home to many school reform innovations, has yet again provided a successful model for reinventing k-12 education for the 21st century.