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John McCain ??? Teachers
At his high school alma matter yesterday, John McCain made his first major education speech (not just the first in this campaign???the first in his life, as far as I can tell).
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Report: British kids in 2008 are even more whiny than in 2007
Some 300,000 students in the U.K. have asked that their national examination scores be given "special consideration," i.e. additional points, because, for example, they had a fever on test day. The number of successful appeals has risen by 9 percent since last year.
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More on paying kids in NYC
Regarding Coby's earlier post: A much-overlooked aspect of the "cash for grades" idea is that it might???and,
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Yet another post on something from the New York Times
In a recent Bloggingheads.tv video, Glenn Loury of Brown University and Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute discuss Mayor Bloomberg's "cash for grades" program.
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Home Improvement, NCLB Edition
At Slate, the University of Virginia's Jim Ryan offers a brilliant plan to fix No Child Left Behind. Why so brilliant? Well, he agrees with us; his to-do list looks a lot like ours:
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This but not That
Spellings definitely thinks we should have a national way of calculating the number of dropouts.
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Let's not talk about sex
The New York Times seems especially fascinated with smart kids who don't sleep with each other.
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Vicious cycle
The New York Times reports today on the admissions crunch at Ivy League schools. Due to record numbers of applicants, Harvard's acceptance rate this year is down to a new low of 7.1 percent, and other schools are setting their own records as well. Why?
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The New York Times thinks you're racist
At least that was my takeaway from from??today's "Editorial Observer" column about Barack Obama's race speech.* Don't worry, the Times thinks I'm racist too, for I opposed the country's old-style welfare system.
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Big News: Public employee unions don't like outsourcing
And in other shockers, environmentalists don't like NASCAR and feminists don't like Vegas.
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The law behind the myths
In Sunday's Washington Post, Fordham Institute president Chester E. Finn debunks five of the most common (and harmful) myths pervading debates over No Child Left Behind. Good stuff, and I'm not just saying that because he's my boss.
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The New Apartheid
Increasing numbers of U.S. Muslims are opting for home schooling. It's a bad idea for one simple reason: They are segregating themselves from mainstream American society.
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What's eating Gordon Brown?
Classes will be affected by class resentments if British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, have their way. While both men offer beaucoup platitudes about increasing the skills of Britain's workforce and its global economic competitiveness, their government is, contemporaneously, attempting to dull the few sparkling parts of the U.K.'s educational system.
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WWSD?
Ever since the release of his biography of Al Shanker, Tough Liberal, Richard Kahlenberg has been busy penning articles about the education issue du jour, asking always: What would Shanker do?
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Accountability that even a teacher could love
Good leaders know that the buck stops with them; others need to be reminded. So reasons the Mississippi Board of Education, which pushed through the state's House of Representatives a bill to remove underperforming superintendents from their jobs, even if they were elected by the public.
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Separation of church and class
The Hillsborough County school district (Tampa) has adopted a secular academic calendar, according to which religious holidays are not free days: the school must go on. For Good Friday, however, the district announced that it would excuse all absences--whether for religious reasons or not. To complicate matters further, some parents received the news via telephone message while others did not.
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Running to Roget
As members of the Massachusetts State Board of Education rack their collective brain by searching for kinder words than "underperforming" with which to label sorry schools, the board's only student member, Zachary Tsetsos, seemed to be also the only one with any common sense. "Why are we spending time on this?" he asked.
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Denver Public Schools Employee Compensation: The Role of Pension Benefits
Sari Levy, Van Schoales, and Tony LewisPiton and Donnell-Kay FoundationsMarch 2008
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Sunshine State dark age
The evolution debate in Florida grows tiresome, and not only because Ben Stein--he of somnolent monotone--is now involved, but because it keeps reiterating the same, tired points albeit in different ways.
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Want to work for Fordham?
Are you a writer/researcher/thinker/doer with a passion for improving education? Then check out this opportunity to join the Fordham team.
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Better late than never? It's almost time for Plan B
Every few months, it seems, someone calls for a moratorium on new charter schools in the Buckeye State until the current ones can be further "studied." Yet the one statutory requirement for an examination of Ohio's charter and choice programs has lingered without action for more than a year and its deadline is looming.
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"Free college" actually costs a lot of money
It would cost up to $200 million to provide college scholarships to graduates of the Cincinnati; Covington, Kentucky; and Newport, Kentucky, public-school systems, according to the Cincinnati-based Strive education partnership.
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about the governor's education takeover
Terry Ryan's Columbus Dispatch op-ed concerning Governor Strickland, Ohio school superintendent Susan Tave Zelman, and Fordham's Fund the Child report, sparked comment, including this e-mail from Kris Christenson:
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Seems like a plan...
In 2005, state governors and educational leaders agreed the country needs to boost achievement levels to prepare students for college and demanding 21st century jobs. That's a good idea and lots of educational leaders and politicians have mouthed similar words since Achieve Inc.
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Mr. Governor, what are you fighting for?
Governor Ted Strickland made it clear in his State of the State address, and more recently in comments in the press, that he wants control over what happens per K-12 education. What's been missing from this debate around the shake-up in the state's educational leadership, however, are details of the governor's plan for moving K-12 education forward.
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Calamity days are truly calamitous for charters
Many Ohio school districts have surpassed their state-allotted five "calamity days" this year. Consequently, charter schools have learned district calamity days are even more calamitous because they are at the mercy of local school districts for busing.
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What's a Euphemism for 'Dumb Idea'?
This Associated Press story reports that the kinder-and-gentler Massachusetts Board of Education is "searching for gentler euphemisms to describe the state's failing schools after educators complained current labels d