Commentary
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Commentary
Why teachers like Mike
Mike Huckabee made news--and history--last week when the New Hampshire affiliate of the National Education Association endorsed him for president in the upcoming primary--the first time it ever recommended a GOP candidate.
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Lessons Learned: New Teachers Talk About Their Jobs, Challenges and Long-Range Plans
Public AgendaDecember 2007
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Check yourself before you wreck yourself
"The popular value of ________ creativity and autonomy as high priorities must give way to a willingness to follow certain carefully prescribed ________ practices."
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Closing the Cumberland Gap
Rhode Island's 5,000-student Cumberland School District has hit a rough patch. Its state funding has dropped by $6 million over the last decade. And in neighboring Massachusetts, student test scores in districts with similar demographics are nearly double those that Cumberland is able to muster. But the city's mayor, Daniel McKee, has a plan.
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Ideas with merit
Dallas education administrators are learning a valuable lesson: teachers are reluctant to work in tough classrooms, even if you pay them $6,000 extra.
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Head Start, poor finish
In July 2003, President George W. Bush visited a Maryland elementary school and called for legislation to "hold Head Starts [sic] accountable for getting the job done." Last week, he reluctantly rubber-stamped a bill that contains almost none of the reforms he advocated.
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High Principal Turnover Found in Low-Performing Schools
Advocates for Children and YouthDecember 2007
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Bigotry is back
2007 may be known as the year when the "soft bigotry of low expectations" made a comeback. It started with Education Week's dubious "Chance-for-Success Index" (motto: demography is destiny) and is finishing with another doozy from Michael "No Excuse Left Behind" Winerip.
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Who will be the fittest?
Evolution debates are lighting up the opinion pages of Florida newspapers. On one side are supporters of proposed revisions to the state's science standards, which, if approved by the Board of Education early in 2008, will include the "e-word" for the first time in 11 years. On the other side are creationists and their allies, of which board member Donna Callaway is one.
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Why not weapon-proof schools?
The New York Times Magazine just published its "7th Annual Year in Ideas," and sandwiched between Wave Energy and Wikiscanning one finds Weapon-Proof School Gear. The gear in question is the backpack; Mike Pelonzi and Joe Curran have invented a bullet-proof variety.
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Sources of charter-school mediocrity
A version of this editorial appeared as an op-ed in the December 11, 2007, Columbus Dispatch.
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Hopes, Fears, & Reality: A Balanced Look at American Charter Schools in 2007
Robin J. Lake, editorCenter on Reinventing Public Education's National Charter Research ProjectDecember 2007
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I wish it was like 1999
I enjoyed reading Mike Petrilli's recent article "Parties like its 1999" (November 29, 2007). But I wonder if the lens Petrilli uses to evaluate the education proposals of presidential candidates fails to factor in a consideration of the federal role versus the state role in education.
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George Will on NCLB: Right diagnosis, wrong cure
George Will doesn't much like the federal government, and he certainly doesn't much like the federal government getting involved in education. So it comes as no surprise that he doesn't like No Child Left Behind. More precisely, he loathes it.
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Higher-ed diversity done right
Universities have long complained that far too many of their incoming students are ill-prepared for the rigors of college; the problem is particularly acute for low-income and minority students. Several institutions are actually doing something about it.
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The Preparation Gap: Teacher Education for Middle School Mathematics in Six Countries (MT21)
William H. Schmidt, et alDecember 2007
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The 2007 Brown Center Report on American Education: How Well Are American Students Learning?
Tom LovelessBrookings InstitutionDecember 2007
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Voices of experience help charter-school board members
On November 30, the Fordham Foundation, in partnership with the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the Ohio Department of Education, the Franklin County Education Service Center, and the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, sponsored a charter-school board governance training program for about 85 charter school board members, operators, and sponsors.
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The Cincinnati promise?
More than a year ago, the Strive education partnership was formed with much fanfare in the Queen City to create a scholarship program much like the Kalamazoo Promise in Michigan.
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School-funding ideas could force Strickland's hand
Ted Strickland has hung his success or failure as governor on fixing Ohio's school funding system. A quarter of the way through his term, he has yet to announce a timeline for his fix, let alone the specifics of a plan. Republican state Sen.
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Selected comments from our readers
Regarding a November 28 review by Emmy L. Partin:If I were writing your article, I would have to have called it, "Schools Are Worse than You Can Imagine!" And it would apply to publicly-funded schools nationwide along with many of the private schools.
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The greening of NCLB?
Guess why U.S. schoolchildren are said not to know enough about global warming? As with everything else that may or may not be wrong with young Americans, just blame NCLB. So says the North American Association for Environmental Education's recent study, Environmental Literacy in America.
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Not so flat
Jackie Robson shows why the U.S. is the globe's innovator. She's a gifted 14-year-old who skipped high school, attends Mary Baldwin College, lives in a dormitory and takes classes such as Folk Dance and Japanese 101. When reflecting on her middle-school experience, Jackie says, "Most of the stuff throughout the year I knew already.
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A TAKSing question
Which is scarier: a high-school student who can't read or a fifth grader with a beard? Since 2002-03, Texas has required third and fifth graders to pass a test in order to move on to the next grade level. The law, brainchild of then-Governor George W.
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Fenty forges ahead
D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty is spending political capital like it grows on trees. At least that's how it seemed last week, when Fenty announced his plans to close 23 District schools and received serious backlash from the city council.
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Bugs: it's what's for dinner
If you live in New Zealand and you feel like chicken tonight, perhaps you should settle for The Other White Meat. That's because 17-year-old Kiwi Jane Millar, while working toward her IB Programme Diploma, conducted a science experiment that showed that several local supermarket chickens contained anti-biotic resistant bugs.
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Rank and file rankings no more
Last week, U.S. News and World Report, the most widely known source of college and grad-school rankings, decided to try its hand at ranking America's high schools.
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Why not Catholic charter schools?
The holidays are here just in time, because seven of the District of Columbia's inner-city Catholic schools are in need of a Christmas miracle. Like their peers nationwide, they face a crippling financial crisis that threatens to bring their heralded work to an end.
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Setback for virtual schools
"If you can't beat ‘em, sue ‘em," has become an unofficial American motto, and one that the teachers unions shrewdly employ across the land, pretty much wherever they lose in the legislature. This week's example comes from the Badger State.