Just two years ago, the New York Times heaped praise upon Wake County (Raleigh), North Carolina, for its schools' economic integration program, which the paper called the "main reason" that Wake's black and Hispanic students "have made such dramatic strides in standardized reading and math tests.&q
Tuesday brought two notable events on the education-choice front, one a clear setback, the other a surprise whose significance is yet to be determined.
Why are the presidential candidates generally ignoring education, even when the issue consistently ranks atop voter concerns (in a recent Pew survey, ed came out above jobs, social security, and even terrorism)? Might the 17 aspirants eschew the subject because middle-class voters, while they certainly care about education, are generally content with their children's schools?
Paul E. Peterson and Matthew M. ChingosHarvard UniversityNovember 2007
Once upon a time, elementary school teachers separated their classrooms into bluebirds and redbirds, fast readers and slow. It was called ability grouping and was an obvious, pragmatic, and effective way to differentiate instruction for students.
Explain this: Two public schools, one in the South Bronx and one in Harlem, academically outperform most of their counterparts in much wealthier Park Slope, Brooklyn. Stumped? The answer, of course, is that the two schools in question, KIPP Academy and Harlem Village Academy, are charter schools--and damn good ones at that.
Charles Sykes ends his op-ed about over-protectiveness, which appeared in today's Wall Street Journal, with a quote from the Duke of Wellington: "The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton." In other words, childhood competition shapes a nation's character.
The charter-school scene in Ohio is not one in which education reformers can take pride.
