Commentary
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.
Topics
Commentary
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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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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We're making progress
In his response to Achieve's 2007 Closing the Expectations Gap report, Checker Finn lamented what he characterized as the slow pace of state progress in adopting the American Diploma Project (ADP) policy agenda that Achieve, the Fordham Foundation, and the Education Trust developed four years ago.
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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 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.
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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 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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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.
Report
Governance
Too Good to Last: The True Story of Reading First
Too Good to Last: The True Story of Reading First is an in-depth and alarming study of Reading First's betrayal. Under the leadership of White House domestic policy chief Margaret Spellings and with support from Congress, Reading First was to provide funding to primary-reading programs that were based on scientific research. Backlash and brouhaha followed. Aggrieved whole-language program proprietors complained bitterly that their wares couldn't be purchased with Reading First funds. Then the administration turned its back on Reading First, allowing the program to be gutted and starved of funding.
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The recipe for success?
The Wall Street Journal examines why Finland's laid-back education system leads the world. Long story short, nobody knows.
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Curriculum & Instruction
Ignorance is not bliss
Are we rearing a nation of ignorant students? This is the question posed in the latest report, Still at Risk, by Fordham's sister organization, Common Core.
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BOOK IT! it's not
An interesting press release popped up in my inbox today. An excerpt: With 13 million children living in poverty in the United States, US Airways has made a bold step to help end the cycle of poverty through a new cause partnership with Reading Is Fundamental. Today, US Airways and RIF are launching the ???Fly with US. Reading with Kids."
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Why Asian students do better in math
It may not be simply that they study harder (though anecdotal evidence suggests they do).
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The opacity of hope
We stand corrected. Last week, Gadfly posited that perhaps Barack Obama has an open mind when it comes to school choice.
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What a difference a mile makes
Broad Acres and Adelphi elementary schools are neighbors serving an impoverished corner of the Washington, D.C. suburbs that is home to thousands of recent immigrants.
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Teachers gone wild
A recent study finds that one-third of American teenagers regularly post offensive language or manipulated images on the web, and over 25 percent of these online pranks target teachers and principals. Such hi-jinks are not always a laughing matter.
Commentary
Rather unreasonable
Common Core, an organization devoted to bringing content-rich instruction to U.S. classrooms, was born this week. Susan Jacoby's new book, The Age of American Unreason, was born two weeks earlier. It seemed fitting to welcome the former by reading and reviewing the latter.
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Lessons learned
Yes, I've learned plenty in the 57 years since I entered 1st grade in Dayton, Ohio's Fairview Elementary School, and the four decades since I taught social studies at Newton High School in Massachusetts. Let me share a dozen of the most profound lessons.
Commentary
I'm thinking of a number...
Everybody knows Detroit has a dropout problem. But no one, it seems, can say exactly how bad it is. According to a new study by the Education Policy Center at Michigan State University, just 31.9 percent of Detroit students graduate in four years.
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Fordham study shows how labor agreements can thwart innovation
Collective-bargaining agreements can have a tremendous impact on virtually all aspects of school-district operations, yet they pass under the public radar in many communities.
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about the Gem City
Fordham's Vice President for Ohio Programs and Policy, Terry Ryan, wrote an op-ed piece for the Dayton Daily News that also ran in the last Gadfly contrasting the "two Daytons" (see here).
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Senate bill could boost charter schools' effectiveness, but opponents prefer killing charters altogether
Improvements have been made to Ohio's charter-school law over the past several years and some in the Senate are considering further changes to strengthen charter accountability. Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives legislators are seeking to kill charters completely.
Commentary
KIDS COUNT data center valuable source of info
For a reliable, user-friendly source of data about the lives of children outside the schoolhouse, look no further than the Annie E. Casey Foundation's KIDS COUNT data center.
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Strickland's long-time advisor says the guv has jump-started debate
First Lady Frances Strickland is one of Governor Ted Strickland's closest education advisors. The Ohio Education Gadfly interviewed Mrs. Strickland in the wake of her husband's State of the State address, in which he proposed revamping the state's educational bureaucracy. The "over-emphasis" on standardized testing is harming public education, she argues.
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Bubble kids
David Hoff reports that Senators Clinton and Obama are calling for new kinds of tests under No Child Left Behind.