After his victories in this week's Potomac Primary, Senator John McCain is predicted to have greater than a 90 percent chance of sealing the GOP presidential nomination, according to the Iowa Electronic Markets.
Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan C. HasselNGA Center for Best Practices2007
High-stakes tests are useful in a lot of ways. This isn't one of them. According to the Palm Beach Post, several of Florida's previously fired teachers are being reinstated after an appellate court found that their students' test scores were not factored into the dismissals. A state law requires that student performance be part of any teacher evaluation.
It's no real surprise that, after years of lurking menacingly in the shadows, The Contract has emerged into the spotlight, indeed has leaped to the top of the education policy agenda. Sooner or later, the purveyors of any number of flavors of school reform were bound to see their prospects entangled with teachers' collective bargaining agreements.
A statewide task force in Maryland recommends requiring youngsters to stay in school until the age of 18 (today's pupils can leave legally at 16). This move, promises the task force, will keep more Old Line State students from dropping out, which may or may not be true.
Is the charter movement--which has sputtered along, making steady but slow progress--finally ready to kick it into high gear? Signs in New York point to yes, say USA Today's Richard Whitmire and Eduwonk Andy Rotherham.
Edited by Frederick M. HessHarvard Education PressFebruary 2008
Before Sol Stern's City Journal article pitting "instructionists" against "incentivists," there was Ted Kolderie et al's white paper contrasting "innovation with school and schooling"
As someone who has been working and living in Dayton for the past seven years, I am constantly reminded of the fact that there are, in fact, two Daytons.
In his second State of the State address, Governor Strickland kept with his tradition of not distributing hard copies of the speech ahead of time and not providing supplemental information about his proposed programs and policies.
Wondering what the future holds for public education? Then check out Education|Evolving's predictions and proposals in "The Other Half of the Strategy: Following up on System Reform by Innovating with School and Schooling."
Robert A. Douglas of the Richard Allen Schools responded to an editorial Checker Finn wrote laying out his 10 factors of charter-school mediocrity in the December 12 Gadfly.You laid out 10 factors that you said contributed to charter school mediocrity. You didn't say anything what part the curriculum plays.
Colleen D. Grady, of the State Board of Education, responds to Terry Ryan's opinions concerning high-school reform:I agree with your list of five keys to high-school reform but felt you stopped short of a couple of crucial ideas.
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 (see here). In the report's introduction the institute's president, Chester E.
Chester E. Finn, Jr.Princeton University Press2008
WAUSEON, Ohio--New members of a school's staff sometimes can take some time to work in, although it's easier when a new staffer has four legs, like Kramer, the new counselor at Burr Road Middle School.
Mark Twain once quipped that God, for practice, first made idiots. Then he made school boards.
Thomas Toch and Robert RothmanEducation SectorJanuary 2008
In 1965, then British Education Secretary Anthony Crosland said, "If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to destroy every f***ing grammar school in England." He didn't, but his heirs are still trying. English grammar schools are selective state-run schools; students must pass an exam to attend them.
It's gratifying to publish one's memoirs but also a little scary. People keep asking if this is the end. Am I retiring? Dying, maybe? Will there be anything more?
President George W. Bush released his 2009 budget on Monday, and Gadfly is struggling to summon the energy to care. By the time Congress acts on these proposals, it will probably be December and the President will be the lamest duck since Daffy. Said differently, this budget is dead on arrival. Which is a shame, because it's actually a decent statement of Uncle Sam's proper priorities.
Gary Ritter, Marc Holley, Nathan Jensen, Brent Riffel, Marcus Winters, Joshua Barnett, and Jay GreeneJanuary 2008
In his December 13th editorial ("Sources of charter-school mediocrity"), Checker Finn laid out ten factors that contributed to charter-school mediocrity. He didn't say anything about what part the curriculum plays.
Washington, D.C., council member Marion Barry just doesn't get it. The District, under the capable stewardship of young leaders such as Mayor Adrian Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, is rejecting the wasted potential of its past for the promise of the future.
Boosting Ohio's economy, expanding health care for families and children, and retooling the Buckeye State's manufacturing and technological base for the 21st century have clear ties to education and Governor Ted Strickland deserves praise for vision in these areas.
Garrison Keillor, he of soothing baritone and dyed-in-the-wool liberal sensibilities, writes that it is not "Republican oligarchs in top hats and spats" who are failing the nation's public-school children. No. "Nice people are failing these kids, but when they are called on it, they get very huffy," he writes.
Gadfly was still a bit groggy from the holidays when this fine piece about Jonathan Kozol appeared in the Weekly Standard. The article traces Kozol's development, from failed novelist (an excerpt of his book Fume of Poppies: "The white of her belly was lovely and gay.
