When Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa decided to reform his city's schools, he likely didn't know what all he was getting into. An incident last week, when the mayor took a cadre of journalists to visit an L.A. high school and a student spray painted his bus with graffiti, is representative.
Call it what you want--buyer's remorse, reverting to form, Hoekstra's rebellion--but Congressional conservatives aren't going to accept NCLB version 2.0 without a fight. Rather, they're bent on emasculating or repealing it.
Martin R. West and Paul E. Peterson, EditorsThe Brookings Institution2007
Mitchell B. PearlsteinCenter of the American ExperimentJanuary 2007
The Beastie Boys once spurred angst-ridden teens to fight for their right to party.
Exxon Mobil is concerned about U.S. math and science education, so it has decided to pay kids to study. The company is pouring $125 million (a bit more than one day's profits) into the National Math and Science Initiative, which will reward students by paying them cash for each English, science, or math AP test on which they receive a score of 3 or higher.
This month's Atlantic includes a thoughtful article by Jonathan Rauch about how to end the culture wars: "slug them out state by state." He points to the cautionary tale of Roe v. Wade, which nationalized an intensely controversial issue:
It’s no secret that data-driven decision making figures prominently in high-performing schools. What it entails and how to implement it successfully are the subjects of this report commissioned by the New Schools Venture Fund, a venture philanthropy firm working to improve and reform public education.
Those who care about the education of Ohio’s neediest children are stuck between two vexed options--the proverbial rock or hard place. The first are traditional district schools with decades of evidence--low test scores, high drop-out rates--of how poorly they meet many children’s needs.
According to this new study, urban area charter schools appear to be safer than their traditional district counterparts.
In the debate over Indiana’s K-12 education funding, House Democrats are seeking a freeze on funding for charter schools. The result would be “de facto moratorium” on any new charters, insisted Dan Roy, Indianapolis’s director of charter schools.
If a recent University of Washington study is to be believed, reforming Ohio’s education system could cost from $1.2 to $2.4 billion more annually--a 16 to 31 percent increase in state P-12 education spending. And that’s just the state’s share (47 percent of current funding).
If there was the slightest doubt that Steve Jobs is one of the most courageous men of our time, it was dispelled dramatically on February 16th. There he was at a high profile education conference when, in what I believe was a spontaneous outburst, he decided to take on teacher unions.
Last week we invited readers to submit their own ideas for the forthcoming education X PRIZE. Here are a few of the responses.
The Gadfly's attempts to maintain ("The problem with nuance," March 1, 2007) that it has not done a flip-flop about the control of education in the various states by federal bureaucrats, e.g., its present approval of the NCLB Act, is much like a woman arguing that she is only partly pregnant.
State education officials in the Land of Lincoln are jumping for joy--student performance on the state's ISAT exam is up from 2005. Way, way up. On most exams, the 2005-2006 gains outpaced the improvement made over the previous five years combined.
Harvard psychologist Susan Linn, co-founder of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, sees something devilish lurking behind Pizza Hut's "Book It" program, which rewards young readers with free pizzas.
David Brooks is softening. He's looking for "creative" presidential candidates willing to "talk about improving the lives of students" instead of just talking "about improving the schools." The creative ones "will emphasize that education is a cumulative process that begins at the dawn of life." Sen.
Rod PaigeThomas Nelson Publishers
Center on Education PolicyFebruary 2007
U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for a Competitive WorkforceMarch 2007
National Center for Education StatisticsFebruary 2007 The Nation's Report Card: America's High School Graduates--Results from the 2005 NAEP High School Transcript StudyNational Center for Education StatisticsFebruary 2007
Last August, Mike Antonucci's Education Intelligence Agency reported the findings of an internal AFT "communications audit." Chief among members' gripes was their union's "nuanced" position on No Child Left Behind.
When Tom Vander Ark left the Gates Foundation at the end of last year, the edu-world curiously awaited his next move.
The South Florida Giant Underground Weirdness Magnet is at it again. How else to explain the events that brought Miami resident Dalila Rodriguez together with a copy of Vamos a Cuba? Seems Ms.
Passionate classroom debates over Nietzsche and Proust are not every student's cup of tea. And for too long, those who struggled with such approaches to learning found their way to auto shop or wood shop, and abandoned math, science, and history along the way. But some schools are wising up and using vocational ed to reconnect students to higher-level learning.
Sergeant Joe Friday of Dragnet fame was content with "just the facts"; the Department of Education's Inspector General is not so humble. How else to explain his animus toward the Reading First program, recently found by OMB to be one of only four "effective" programs in the entire Education Department?
