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Commentary
College sports and the decline of higher education
There is nothing new about the charges raised by a trio of recent publications on college athletics: that campus sports once fostered values like teamwork and perseverance, but now promote crass commercialism while contributing to a campus atmosphere of play and partying that distracts students from academic pursuits. Yet some of the details might shock you.
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Education Policy for the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities in Standards-Based Reform
Center for Urban Research and Policy Studies, University of Chicago August 2001
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Occasional Papers on Children Achieving
Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Pennsylvania August 2001
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A New Commitment: Effective Remediation Strategies for High School Students
Mass Insight Education Fall 2001
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America not so exceptional when it comes to variability in student achievement
Critics of international education comparisons often complain that they are misleading because the variation in student performance is so great in the U.S. "The achievement of American schools is a lot more variable than is student achievement from elsewhere," asserted Berliner and Biddle in The Manufactured Crisis. A new study by three RAND researchers says that's not so.
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Tax credits deserve a second look
The school choice movement is gaining in complexity as lawmakers increasingly opt for tax credits instead of vouchers as a way to help citizens, poor and otherwise, pay private school tuition for their children.
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Teaching patriotism in a time of tragedy
WAY TO GO, MR. PRESIDENT! THAT WAS A HELLUVA SPEECH. WE'RE WITH YOU ALL THE WAY! It's been more than a little upsetting to watch the education community respond to last Tuesday's terrible attack on the United States. The prize for greediest, most self-promoting and solipsistic response goes to an outfit called the Public Education Network.
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Privatization through the back door
The New York City Board of Education has figured out how to privatize schools without seeming to. Last spring, parents at five troubled public schools voted down the Edison Project, and it appeared that nonpublic managers were not welcome in the school system. That turns out to be untrue.
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Raising the bar for college admission in New York
The day before the disaster in New York City, The New York Times reported good news about City University of New York. This is a story that deserves to be told, not forgotten. One of the most polarized debates in New York City in recent years occurred when the trustees of the City University of New York (CUNY) decided two years ago to set minimum standards for entry for freshmen.
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Sex ed and its discontents
In response to parents who were uncomfortable with the existing sex ed curriculum, one school district in Minnesota created a two-track program, offering an abstinence-only class alongside the traditional one, which covers contraception, abortion, homosexuality, and other hot topics. Parents could enroll their child in the class of their choice.
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The 2001 Brown Center Report on American Education: How Well Are American Students Learning?
Tom Loveless, The Brown Center on Education Policy, The Brookings Institution September 2001
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Creative answers to teacher shortages
To get around uniform salary schedules that prevent schools and districts from paying extra for teachers with rare skills, these teachers could be hired on a contract basis and shared by many schools, suggests education policy thinker Paul Hill.
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The Arizona Scholarship Tax Credit: Giving Parents Choices, Saving Taxpayers Money
Carrie Lips and Jennifer Jacoby, Cato InstituteSeptember 17, 2001
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Taking on the achievement gap in high school
High-achieving, high-poverty schools are no longer a novelty for elementary or middle school-aged kids, but helping disadvantaged youngsters succeed in high school has been more challenging. An article in Teacher Magazine describes the efforts of an organized group of parents in California to prevent their kids from becoming high school dropout statistics.
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What Teacher Shortage?
Education issues aren't foremost in our minds today, but I will note that the K-12 concern that reached my ears most frequently in recent weeks is the vaunted "teacher shortage" that our schools are said to face.
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The project method of instruction (circa 1921)
If your neighborhood school announces that it is introducing a new kind of instruction centered around student projects, you'll want to visit Teachers College Record's website, TCRecord.org, which this week reprises a 1921 symposium on the project method called "Dangers and Difficulties of the Project Method and How to Overcome Them." We recommend "Projects and Purposes in Teaching and Learning
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Spotlight on Cincinnati, a school district in search of a solution
Union and school district negotiators have reached a tentative agreement on changes in Cincinnati's teacher pay-for-performance plan, this in response to complaints from teachers about the evaluation process.
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Longitudinal Evaluation of School Change and Performance in Title I Schools: Final Report
U.S. Department of Education 2001
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New commission on school choice
The Brookings Institution has been awarded a $1 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to create a "National Working Commission on Choice in K-12 Education." According to The Washington Post, the commission will be managed by Paul Hill and Tom Loveless, and will tackle issues surrounding school choice such as how it affects school quality and student learning and whether it af
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Lowering the bar for high school exit in New Jersey
In New Jersey, students who flunk the state's exit exam can still receive a high school diploma if they earn passing marks on a series of performance assessment tasks drawn up by the state. Last year, 6100 students-nearly 9 percent of graduates-got their diplomas this way.
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Commentary
From Ground Zero Plus One Mile
On September 11 at 8:45 a.m., I was having a cup of coffee and reading the morning paper when I heard a tremendous boom behind me. I live in Brooklyn, about three city blocks from New York Harbor, and directly across the Harbor from my neighborhood is New York City's financial district.
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Illinois teachers fail exams
An examination of pass-fail records from tests of basic skills and subject knowledge taken by Illinois teachers over the last thirteen years revealed that 5,243 current teachers had failed at least one exam, even though these tests are pitched at an extremely low level.
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Parents try to remake a reluctant public school
Most children who live in the Hollywood Hills go to private schools, but a small group of parents from that affluent Los Angeles neighborhood decided two years ago that they might like to send their kids to the local public school.
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Recent Studies from Education Privatization Center
Henry Levin's National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, based at Teachers College, Columbia University, hasn't always done important and well-balanced work, but it's certainly been prolific. What's more, several of the recent "occasional papers" now available on its burgeoning website strike us as worth knowing about, maybe even reading.
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Results of a School Voucher Experiment: The Case of Washington, D.C. after Two Years
Patrick J. Wolf, Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West August 2001