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Charter Schools
Genuflecting before choice
Mike, I may agree with your point that Catholic schools should receive public funding.
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Skittlesgate
News update: School officials have decided to go easy on an eighth-grader caught purchasing contraband goods. Was it guns, drugs, or tobacco? Actually, none of the above. It was candy--and not even the hard-core kind like Snickers or M&M's, which if consumed in large quantities can really pack on the pounds (trust me, I know). It was a bag of Skittles.
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Getting religion on Catholic schools
One of the most anticipated events of Pope Benedict's upcoming trip to Washington is his address to 200 Catholic educators at Catholic University, scheduled for April 17.
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Most wanted
An anti-union group hopes to expose how difficult it is to fire the most dreadful teachers. The Center for Union Facts is asking educators, parents, and students to nominate the "worst unionized teacher in America"; the group will choose ten winners (losers, really) and offer each $10,000 to exit the classroom posthaste.
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Chesapeake watershed
The central offices of the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., school districts are slimming. Baltimore schools chief Andres Alonso this week proposed to cut more than 300 central-office jobs, which will allow him to plug a $40 million budget shortfall and reroute another $70 million directly to schools.
Commentary
Support, in brief
I'll be brief. I want to applaud your efforts regarding the Reading First scandal ("The true story of Reading First"). Reading First was perhaps education's best attempt at supporting the implementation of truly effective programs for struggling readers.
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Five school reformers walk into a bar...
Okay--it was a restaurant, not a bar, where Green Dot's Steve Barr, AEI's Rick Hess, venture philanthropist Vanessa Kirsch, New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, and Gates Foundation alumnus Tom Vander Ark sat down with writer Paul Tough for a New York Times Magazine "roundtable" on education philanthropy.
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Instructional Time in Elementary Schools: A Closer Look at Changes for Specific Subjects
Center on Education PolicyFebruary 2008
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AP-palooza
There are sound ways to encourage more students to enroll in AP classes. But the tack of Seattle's Roosevelt High School, which will require all its sophomores to take at least one AP course next year, is not one of them.
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Prozac pupils
A creeping malaise exists amongst British children, it seems. In February 2007, the United Nations Children Fund labeled U.K. youths the most unhappy in the western world. And why? The Association of Teachers and Lecturers, a national teachers' union, lays the blame at homework's feet.
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The patron saint of busy
St. Anthony School in Milwaukee exists today only because of the city's voucher program. In 1998, before the state supreme court allowed public money to fund religious schools, St. Anthony enrolled under 300 students. Now it has over 1,000 pupils (all but about a dozen attend on vouchers) and is thriving.
Report
School Finance
Fund The Child: Bringing Equity, Autonomy, and Portability to Ohio School Finance
Ohio can boast of praiseworthy gains over the past decade in making school funding more equitable across districts, but there is more work to be done. To mitigate the school-finance inequities that remain within districts and gear school funding toward the realities of student mobility, school choice and effective school-based management, this report recommends that Ohio embrace Weighted Student Funding (WSF), which allocates resources based on the needs of individual students and by sending dollars directly to schools rather than lodging most spending decisions at the district level.
Commentary
In search of the next great Gadfly
Do you have a passion for improving education and a sense of humor? Are you hard-working yet cheerful? Are you able to flex with changing circumstances and work in a fast-paced, demanding environment? If so, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute might be just the place for you.
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Inside ODE's budget cuts
After being dragged over the coals by Governor Ted Strickland in his State of the State Address, the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) has identified $101.2 million worth of budget cuts (see here) to help the governor pare $733 million from state government spending.
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Comprehensive Longitudinal Evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program
School Choice Demonstration ProjectDepartment of Education Reform, University of Arkansas2008
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The Price We Pay: Economic and Social Consequences of Inadequate Education
Clive R. Belfield and Henry Levin, EditorsThe Brookings Institution Press2007
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State sets requirements for STEM instructors
Currently, at least 20 Ohio public schools are seeking high school math and science teachers (see here).
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Reading First press conference
On March 10, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute demanded an inquiry into scandalous efforts by the executive and legislative branches to sabotage the Reading First program. httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=xSrUEHjwt1I
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Too little, too late?
Margaret Spellings addressed the Reading First state directors on Thursday and complained about Congress's "devastating" budget cut of the program. It's about time.
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And nothing at all
Meanwhile, First Lady Laura Bush managed to give a speech about literacy this week and not mention Reading First at all. A real profile in courage.
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The power of suggestion
An article in Tuesday's New York Times references an experiment in which researchers served icy vodka tonics to some college students and icy tonic water to others. Both drinks tasted the same.
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Make like a laser and focus
The final report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel will be released next week, and indications are it will contain several solid proposals while also avoiding many of the contentious "math wars" issues.
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Highly regulated principals
From the Department of Bad Ideas: Creating federal certification for "highly qualified" principals. We would delight in eviscerating proposals like this, but Sheryl Boris-Schacter has already done a fine job of it.
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The education of John McCain
As the GOP worries whether John McCain, now anointed as the party's leader-in-waiting and November standard-bearer, is sufficiently Reaganesque to do right in the Oval Office, here's a point in the senator's favor: Like the Gipper, he doesn't consider education a top presidential priority.
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The patron saint of busy
St. Anthony School in Milwaukee exists today only because of the city's voucher program. In 1998, before the state supreme court allowed public money to fund religious schools, St. Anthony enrolled under 300 students. Now it has over 1,000 pupils (all but about a dozen attend on vouchers) and is thriving.
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A certain Finnish je ne sais quoi
Call it education's version of the French paradox. Students in Finland "have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells, and no classes for the gifted.
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The true story of Reading First
Ethically-challenged political appointee overrides the "merit" process and steers millions of federal dollars to preferred firms, including one that employs his wife, all the while foiling those who would favor a different outcome. The program's intended beneficiaries--poor, illiterate children--lose out.
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The write fight
David Gelernter turns in a brisk essay in the March 3rd Weekly Standard, contending that English, a beautiful language, has been hijacked by feminists who are ruining writing and depleting the supply of those in America who write well. They do this by inserting odd, abrasive phrases like "he or she" and "chairperson" into the vernacular.