KIPP is opening the first of a cluster of schools in Columbus, Ohio, next summer and needs a passionate, high energy executive director at the helm. Learn more about this opportunity here.
Malcolm Gladwell's 2000 bestseller The Tipping Point looks at "social epidemics"-when popular ideas and behavior "tip" quickly (and often unexpectedly) then die out as fast as they started.
The Ohio Department of Education's recent state report card illuminated continuing academic problems in both public district and charter schools. The report card comes on the heels of newspaper stories highlighting auditing and recordkeeping difficulties in some charter schools. Brian L.
The case against the archaic, seniority-before-all-else system of teacher retention in Ohio's schools was never made clearer than with the July "riffing" of Dayton Public Schools teacher Homer Knightstep.
The Ohio Grantmakers Forum recently hosted a conversation between Lt. Governor Lee Fisher and leaders in Ohio's philanthropic community on growing the state's economy.
The NewSchools Venture Fund recently released a report highlighting key insights from its May meeting in New Orleans, now the epicenter of educational reform efforts in America.
Gadfly doesn't consider himself a moral crusader, much less a moral alarmist. But he is--and The Australian newspaper is his mouthpiece.
I commend last week's spotlight on Florida Virtual School (FLVS) and its 10th anniversary ("A happy anniversary," August 30, 2007). But your commentary confused two very different types of virtual schooling programs.
Once upon a time, before U.S. schools were desegregated, the District of Columbia's Dunbar High School provided a top-flight education to the city's black elite and future leaders--so much so that families moved to Washington so their kids could go to school there.
Economics sage Bob Samuelson (my college classmate, if you're interested) wrote last week a characteristically perceptive column, titled "The Economic Catch-22." Observing that "We are now in the ‘blame phase' of the economic cycle," he asked whether peopl
Phi Delta Kappa's recent audit of the Wake County (North Carolina) Public School System should be viewed with healthy skepticism. Case in point: the educators group recommended that Wake tighten its "very liberal" policy on "site-based decision making" (i.e., the central office should give principals less autonomy).
Do not come to school in Indianapolis with your trousers sagging, your shirttail fluttering or your logo-flaunting apparel. For you shall be turned away. The city has just adopted a strict dress code. High school students, for example, must wear solid-colored shirts, either in white or their school's official color. Pants should be tan, black, or navy; go gray and go home.
The last several years have witnessed an explosion in the number of students taking Advanced Placement courses--a laudable trend, on the whole.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
National Charter School Research Project, University of WashingtonAugust 2007
Executives get bonuses when their companies excel, so why not give teachers a bump in pay when their students do the same?
The debate over charter schools in the Buckeye State continued last week when the Coalition for Public Education (CPE)-a group that has filed numerous lawsuits against charters and the charter school program over the years-held a news conference to unveil its
In 2005, Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved a plan to spend an extra $1.6 billion in bond money (increasing the program to $2 billion over 10 years) to support high-tech science research and industries in the state (see here).
The Mind Trust-a non-profit group supporting education innovation in Indianapolis-is offering Education Entrepreneur Fellowships to extraordinary individuals to develop strategies and launch initiatives that will transform public education. Learn more here.
True or false: NCLB considers teachers going through alternate routes to certification (like those employed by Teach For America) to be "highly qualified." False, charges a new lawsuit filed by "a coalition of pare
Someone call Jay Greene--officials are now naming schools after nonexistent historical figures! Our fourth president officially has a middle initial in Ogden, Utah, though it would be news to him. Seems someone submitted the name "James A.
Schools are under increasing pressure to boost the test scores of their special education students. And according to the Wall Street Journal (which is running a series about mainstreaming), many schools have responded to that pressure not by working harder, but by exploiting loopholes.
The debate about "mainstreaming"--whether students are best served in "regular" settings instead of segregated, specialized ones--is typically reserved for discussions of special education (see below). But this week's Time magazine considers mainstreaming (and its opposite) in the context of America's most gifted children.
