A causal link between increased teacher absences and decreased student achievement exists. So it's no wonder that school leaders are looking for ways to keep educators in the classroom. "We have terrible attendance," said Van V.
The benefits of a value-added approach to school accountability, one that measures the test-score gains of individual students from year-to-year, is that it doesn't unfairly penalize schools that enroll large numbers of disadvantaged students. But it has drawbacks.
In the Big Apple, teachers who are "excessed"--i.e., replaced with teachers deemed more effective by principals--are put into an "Absent Teacher Reserve," which currently houses some 600 educators, all of whom receive full salaries and benefits and cost the city $81 million this year. To be clear: These 600 teachers are paid for doing nothing.
Life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Life gives you students, make them teachers. That, at least, is the innovative policy used by Chalfonts school, in the U.K., which has dealt with teacher shortages by paying 16-, 17-, and 18-year-olds $10 for each 50-minute class they teach. Generally, the older pupils teach classes of 11- to 16-year-olds.
The Forum for Education and DemocracyApril 2008
Melissa Roderick, Jenny Nagaoka, Elaine AllensworthConsortium on Chicago School ResearchMarch 2008
The requirement that states disaggregate test-score results by race is one feature of No Child Left Behind that receives near-universal praise. So dividing the data focuses communities on closing the achievement gap, for example, and it doesn't allow shiny test-score averages to hide the poor performance of particular student subgroups.
Gadfly has generally supported experiments that pay students for good attendance or test scores. And Baltimore's "Stocks in the Future," which gives middle school students up to $80 to invest in the stock market and lets them keep their earnings, is a model of what smart pay-pupils-for-performance programs should look like.
When a school experiments with paying students for their good grades or attendance, as Coby suggests a school should if its leadership so chooses, it makes not simply a pedagogical or policy decision but an ethical one, too.
Starting today, I'll do a weekly roundup of New York City union boss Randi Weingarten's most ridiculous statements from the week past.
Coby will no doubt disagree with this interpretation. But his conclusion reminds one of that advanced by "post-partisans," those who think we should move beyond our (in Coby's words) "heated, theory-driven arguments" and find that hallowed, middle ground.
Ben Stein is really doing himself a disfavor by promoting his new documentary thusly.
So why did Miami-Dade superintendent Rudy Crew turn down a principal's offer to work for a $1 salary?
The New York Times offers a piece today about the progress of providing good??public??education in New Orleans.
No, not Reverend Wright, but our favorite ed school professor, Bill Ayers. * Friend of Barack Obama
In the Weekly Standard, Liam reviews Anthony Kronman's Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life, which, he reports, picks up where William Buckley left off in God and Man at Yale--lamenting what has gone wrong in higher education,
Students from neighboring districts badly want in to the Copley-Fairlawn City Schools, so they're sneaking in. In response, the district is offering cash rewards for anyone who rats out the illegals. Yeesh.
It's too bad that Lucky Liam is spending a few days being a bon vivant in Montreal because it would have been fun to see his reaction to this story out of California.
We appreciate Eduwonk Andy's nice plug of our Catholic schools report, and agree with him that public funding shou
An article in yesterday's Washington Post reports on Grover Whitehurst's efforts as founding director of the Institute of Education Sciences to improve the quality and impact of education research.
The Washington Post editors turn in a nice defense of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program today. As they point out, it will be tough to get Congress to approve the $18 million set aside for the program, especially considering the fierce opposition of D.C.
In the Wall Street Journal, William McGurn picks up where Kathryn Jean Lopez left off , arguing that McCain could win African American votes from Obama (or Clinton) if he would take "this (school choice) campaign i
I can't comment with much authority on the legal details of the case, but if you're into ed policy surely it's worth knowing that "a federal judge has dismissed the last of four claims in Connecticut's challenge to the federal No Child Left Behind law."
The Associated Press reports: A Coffee County High School substitute teacher has been arrested in what police say appears to be a scheme to bilk money from students promised a trip to Disney World.
If states and school districts based layoff decisions on merit, and not seniority, we wouldn't have to read about ridiculous situations like this.
