Satisfied, Optimistic, Yet Concerned: Parent Voices on the Third Year of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program
Thomas Stewart, Patrick J. Wolf, Stephen Q. Cornman, Kenann McKenzie-ThompsonGeorgetown University Public Policy InstituteDecember 2007
Thomas Stewart, Patrick J. Wolf, Stephen Q. Cornman, Kenann McKenzie-ThompsonGeorgetown University Public Policy InstituteDecember 2007
We hear often about the decline of reading and what a nasty harbinger it is. But seldom do we hear the case made as convincingly as Caleb Crain puts it in the December 24th New Yorker.
Reading First, funded at $1 billion per year, is among the most promising federal efforts to help the poor. Title I, funded at $12 billion per year, is not nearly so effective.
Boys will be boys. But not if Ana Homayoun has anything to say about it. Homayoun is one of a burgeoning number of tutors who have realized that many of boys' school difficulties stem from lack of organization.
Some of the best food to be found in England has its origins in Delhi and Puducherry. Now, it seems, some of the best education to be found in Japan has its home in India, too.
No serious person thinks students who require special education should not get it. It's undeniable, however, that public schools have a history of shunting into special education classes many students who suffer from no learning disability but who may simply lag academically for one reason or another, or who have trouble behaving.
Washington, D.C., parents could not have been pleased after reading about the haphazard way that curriculum decisions are made in their city. Two recent Washington Post articles paint a story of administrative incompetence and misplaced power.
Can Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa catch a break? Not only does he have to battle with hardnosed politicians in Sacramento, intransigent school board members, tough union types, and angry parents--now he's catching flak from the kids!
I thoroughly enjoyed Liam Julian's piece "Check yourself before you wreck yourself." As the director of a teacher training initiative at Haskins Laboratories, practicing teachers, particularly the "big-hearted 22 year-olds," tell me they don't know how to teach children to read.
Marc Lampkin--who runs the Bill Gates and Eli Broad-funded $60 million "ED in '08" initiative to make education a top-tier issue in the presidential campaign--doesn't believe that his purpose is to make education a top-tier issue in the presidential campaign.