On being an American
September 3, 2002I just finished reading a sampling of the essays contained in your report on September 11 and can only hope that the report gets the wide circulation that it deserves.
September 3, 2002I just finished reading a sampling of the essays contained in your report on September 11 and can only hope that the report gets the wide circulation that it deserves.
This week's New York Times Magazine contained a fascinating profile of the quirky Goldstein family of West Hempstead, NY-the von Trapps of the spelling bee world.
Cardinal Edward Egan and other New York bishops have charged state politicians with violating poor parents' "fundamental rights" by condemning kids to failing public schools and denying them the option to attend parochial schools.
While the National Educational Goals Panel and others have reported high school graduation rates remaining essentially stable (around 86 percent) over the last decade, the graduation rate has actually fallen if students receiving GEDs are not included in those numbers, according to an article by Duncan Chaplin of the Urban Institute that appears in the new issue of Education Next.
Aspiring teachers in the Bay State did not do as well on their tests. More than half of the applicants who were accepted into the state's fast-track teacher certification program contingent upon their passing the Massachusetts Test for Educator Licensure failed the test, according to an analysis by a critic of the fast-track program.
One year after pass rates on the MCAS exam rose significantly-a gain which was dismissed as a fluke by opponents of Massachusetts' high-stakes testing program-scores on the test have risen yet again, though this round of gains is smaller than last year's.
Contrary to many people's glum assumption, urban school systems are not all education disaster zones. Nor are they all alike. Some, in fact, are far more effective than others at educating children-and we're beginning to understand why that is and what might enable other urban school systems to turn themselves around.
As he ends his tenure as president of Children First America, a private scholarship program, school choice icon Fritz Steiger offers some closing remarks and thanks to his allies. His final "Voice for Choice" statement reads like a mini-history and who's who of the school choice movement. "A Voice for Choice," Fritz S.
Why haven't charter schools taken greater hold in suburban areas in most states?
Pew Forum on Religion and Public LifeAugust 2002
The public school choice provision of the No Child Left Behind act isn't all that different from a federal choice program created two years ago, writes Alexander Russo in this month's Washington Monthly, and the lesson of that Clinton-era program is that providing viable transfer options for children in failing schools is far harder than it sounds.
John Wenders, Idahoans for Tax ReformAugust 2002
Mary SolidaySeptember 2002
National Commission on Teaching and America's FutureAugust 2002
Committee for Economic DevelopmentAugust 2002
Craig Jerald and Richard Ingersoll, Education TrustAugust 2002
Education Writers AssociationJune 2002
The average math score on the SAT rose two points (to 516) this year, while the average verbal score dropped two points to 504, according to figures released this week by the College Board.
As America readies itself for the "anniversary" of the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks, innumerable education groups and experts are again bestirring themselves to tell schools and teachers what to teach their students on this topic. Unfortunately, much of that advice is bad and some is awful.
Test scores in Los Angeles elementary schools are rising nicely and many view such gains as evidence that state and district reforms in math and reading are working. Turning its back on a hodgepodge of exploratory math programs, L.A.U.S.D. standardized its math program and now uses only two textbooks in the elementary grades, both of which stress fundamental skills.
Almost half of New York City's 1200 principals have been on the job for less than three years, and principal retirements are expected to grow in the next few years.
It has often been noted that high-poverty schools tend to be staffed by less experienced teachers. In an online piece at WashingtonPost.com, the always-thoughtful Jay Mathews examines some of the reasons for this and some of the proposed solutions.
The dropout rate for Massachusetts high school students in 2000-2001 stayed steady at 3.5 percent, possibly disappointing critics of the state's new high-stakes graduation exam (MCAS), who had predicted that making the test a graduation requirement would cause dropout rates to skyrocket. In Boston, the rate declined from 9.4 percent in 1999-2000 to 8.5 percent in 2000-2001.
This month's Worth magazine ranks the public and private high schools with the best records of placing graduates at the most elite colleges. Roxbury Latin, Brearley, and Collegiate top the list: at all three schools, at least 20 percent of graduates over the last four years attended Harvard, Yale or Princeton.
In an essay in this month's Commentary, Paul Peterson reflects on whether the Supreme Court's Zelman decision will be a turning point in how Americans think about education, akin to the Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision half a century ago.
Peter GibbonJuly 2002
Virginia Roach and Benjamin A. Cohen, National Association of State Boards of Education2002
Lowell Milken, Milken Family FoundationJuly 2002
Naomi Chudowsky, Nancy Kober, Keith S. Gayler, and Madlene Hamilton, Center on Education PolicyAugust 2002
Paul Hill and Robin Lake with Mary Beth Celio2002