Free-lancer Alexander Russo recently investigated Barack Obama's involvement in Chicago's "local school council" debates of the mid-1990s. At issue was whether the councils (Russo calls them "mini school boards") should have had the power to fire principals, which several did for dubious reasons.
Inaccuracies in school textbooks make Gadfly cringe. So does bias. Too many widely-used textbooks are sloppy and error-filled, not to mention banal. Many are also slanted, mainly to the left.
Jeffrey R. Henig2008
Deborah Meier, of New York University's school of education, believes the school district in Cheektowaga, New York, which bars underachieving and misbehaving middle-school students from extracurricular activities, is "like prison." Odd that Sondra LaMacchia, whose 14-year-old daughter Cortney attends a Cheektowaga middle school, doesn't appear similarly distressed.
Five elementary schools in Philadelphia jettisoned machines that dispense soda for those that dispense juice, cracked down on candy sales and junk food, and gave prizes to pupils who ate roughage. Mirabile dictu, after two years their students were less fat! So concludes a study that will be released in the April issue of Pediatrics.
Christopher Gergen and Gregg VanourekJossey-Bass 2008
A recent New York Times article about the ambitions of United Federation of Teachers (UFT) boss Randi Weingarten is hardly revelatory to those of us in the ed biz, where everyone knows Weingarten is close to taking the helm at the American Federation of Teachers. But the Times piece includes some interesting bits nonetheless.
Since 1990, some 300,000 children have been displaced from Catholic schools that closed during this period--twice as many as were impacted by hurricanes Rita and Katrina. Most of these youngsters live in America's inner cities, most are poor, and their beloved schools closed not because of physical destruction or flooding, not because of poor performance, but for lack of funding.
This ongoing story is understandably unsettling to lots of people. The more one learns about this school, the more one is convinced it's unlawful. Ritual washing and Friday prayers? I know Kuhner doesn't like it....
About this and this (the possibility that New York's principals would be disallowed from considering student test scores when evaluating whether teachers should receive tenure), the New York Times
Surprisingly that wasn't one of Angelina Jolie's suggestions when she spoke yesterday at a Council on Foreign Relations panel about the impact of??the war??on Iraq's children. Find out what she did recommend here.
Seems that not a few people want to punch Britain's Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, in the face.
One would think this topic wouldn't deserve treatment from the Associated Press's national desk???or be picked up in 200 media outlets worldwide (so far).
Trot on over to Eduwonk, where guest blogger J.B. Schramm, Founder and CEO of College Summit, is turning in some substantive posts. He ends each day by pasting excerpts of student admission essays:??
Mike is probably correct that the Wilson and Dilulio textbook is receiving scrutiny and press attention because its authors are conservatives. And no doubt lots of left-leaning texts escape similar inspection.
Per my earlier post, here's yet another example, from economist Steven Levitt, of statistics being incorrectly interpreted. One could unearth scads of such instances.
Coby's post is thought-provoking. At what point does despair negate the effect of incentives?
Periodically, a new album from DBLF Studios, features 119 songs, one for each of the elements on the periodic table, as well as a bonus track called "DBLFesium." And yes, each song is actually about the element it's named after. For instance, here's a sampling of the lyrics from track no. 16, "Sulphur": The lake of fire, yep that's me
This Boston Globe article from a couple Sundays ago highlights the thinking of philosopher Charles Karelis, who teaches at George Washington University.
Last week, Chancellor Eric Fingerhut released his 10-year strategic plan for Ohio's colleges and universities (see here). Over the next decade, Ohio will seek to transform its higher-education institutions to boost educational attainment across the board.
If demographics are truly destiny then policymakers in the Midwest should take serious heed of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education's (WICHE) latest edition of Knocking at the College Door.
Ohio's tormented charter school scene periodically makes for compelling political drama. Lawsuits seek to break new legal ground, novel appeals sail toward the Internal Revenue Service, baffling legislation is enacted, and important characters engage in the charter debate--including politicians, big-money industrialists, union leaders, philanthropists, and editorial commentators.
Two years ago, the Great Lakes states' affiliates of the National Education Association launched the Think Twice project to "review think tank research on public education issues and policies" (see here). The Thomas B.
In producing the Thomas B. Fordham Institute's report Fund the Child: Bringing Equity, Autonomy, and Portability to Ohio School Finance (see here), we knew that critics would attack it as William Phillis did in a March 29 letter to The Columbus Dispatch.
Chad L. Aldis, executive director of School Choice Ohio, took exception to a recent Columbus Dispatch letter to the editor from William Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding.
During puberty, teenagers' daily circadian rhythms are altered and their natural bedtime is shifted to about 11 p.m., according to scientists. This finding, paired with studies that show that teens require at least 8 1/2 hours of sleep per night, suggests that students should not rise until at least 7:30 a.m.
George Will explains that Clinton strategist Mark Penn was caught doing something sensible, surreptitiously. (In Penn's case, it was promoting free trade.)
So says fitness guru cum educational historian Richard Simmons in this Newsweek article: "The idea of NCLB was to make our children ac
