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.
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.
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
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wants to know why people in positions of authority are keeping parents in the dark about the quality of their child's teacher, whom they will meet next week for the first time. "Many of those parents have no real idea of the teacher's capabilities," the editorial board explains.
In 2005, Demarcus Bolton learned that he was one of 20 Atlanta high-schoolers who would receive a $1,000 scholarship from City Councilman H. Lamar Willis's charitable foundation. Two years later, Bolton remains scholarship-less. After calling Willis's office repeatedly, he finally gave up. "I just let it go because I was tired of being lied to," he said.
Call it double-time, academic style. In March, the Pennsylvania National Guard launched a three-week GED prep class, completed in basic training, for those who signed up to serve but didn't finish high school. The program isn't easy (students are in class nine hours a day, and rise at 4:45 a.m. for physical training) but seems to be working. Of the 120 enrolled so far, 85 have received GEDs.
We provoked a bit of a stir with last week's piece, featured in the Wall Street Journal and Gadfly, titled (by the Journal's editors) "Not By Geeks Alone." Most of that stir was intentional.
Phil Gonring, Paul Teske, and Brad JuppHarvard Education Press2007
As Gadfly recently noted , prospects for Congressional bi-partisanship for the renewal of NCLB are eroding. George Miller and Buck McKeon appear to hold very different views--this month, anyway--as to what's wrong, what's right, and what needs fixing, and how NCLB 2.0 should differ from the first iteration.
It's tough to know what to make of them, those who cling to the idea that social engineering will cure the ailments of public education's sickest parts. John Edwards belongs in that camp.
Since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), schools have ramped up instructional time in reading and math but are spending less time teaching things like history, social studies, science, and the arts-subjects not tested under the federal law (see
In June, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute released a study of Ohio's teacher pension system entitled Golden Peaks and Perilous Cliffs: Rethinking Ohio's Teacher Pension System. This report has triggered much overdue public debate in Ohio and beyond regarding teacher pension systems and their interaction with school-improvement efforts.
The powerful forces bearing down on Ohio and public education here were nicely encapsulated in two recent Dayton Daily News articles.
The Charter School Growth Fund is seeking charter management and support organizations to participate in a six-month project to develop strategic business plans, financial models, and implementation plans for expansion. At the conclusion of the project, selected organizations will receive multi-year grants and loan packages to help with the costs associated with expansion.
Last Saturday in Newark, three young people--two of them enrolled in college, one just months away--were fatally shot, execution-style, on the playground of Mount Vernon School, where six-year-olds attend class during most of the year.
There was much to praise in Judge Sharon Gleason's late June decision rejecting claims that Alaska's schools are underfunded, and noting that traditional concepts of "local control" must be abandoned when schools repeatedly fail to educate kids. But there was much to criticize, too. In her ruling in Moore v.
In a globalizing economy, America's competitive edge depends in large measure on how well our schools prepare tomorrow's workforce.And notwithstanding the fact that Congress and the White House are now controlled by opposing parties, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are bent on devising new programs and boosting education spending.
The editors at the Indianapolis Star have written many a perceptive piece about the shortcomings of Indiana's schools (see here and here, for example). Their latest pair of education-related editorials is similarly spot-on.
Who knows schools better, outside consultants or internal operatives (principals and teachers)? The British government is betting on the latter. It's experimenting with a program that pairs principals ("head teachers") of successful schools with their counterparts in less-successful ones.
National Center for Education StatisticsJuly 2007
U.S. Government Accountability OfficeJuly 2007
Gadfly has heretofore expressed no opinion about the District of Columbia's lack of representation in Congress. But the latest crusade of Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District's nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives, makes one think that perhaps D.C. shouldn't have a vote. Norton is trying to kill the D.C.
In last week's News and Analysis ("NCLB Watch: Will the center rise again?"), Michael J. Petrilli inaccurately characterized the reauthorization bill put forward by Senators Lieberman, Landrieu, and Coleman.
At exclusive Mills College in the upscale Oakland foothills, arriving fashionably late to meetings, lattes in hand, is considered good form. At American Indian Charter School in crime-ridden downtown Oakland, tardiness brings a swift kick in the derrière--latte or no.
Just as a centrist consensus around NCLB reauthorization appeared to be in sight (see
National Center for Education Statistics, Institute for Education SciencesJuly 2007
