New York City's Public Schools: The Facts About Spending and Performance

by Emanuel Tobier (Manhattan Institute, May 2001)

Lies and Distortions: The Campaign Against School Vouchers

 By Howard Fuller, PhD and Kaleem Caire.

Adequate Yearly What?

As I write, the House of Representatives has just completed floor action on the education bill and the Senate is expected to return to it soon. The Senate has a bunch more amendments to consider, some of them important, some of them even germane.

Fixing Special Education Will Take More than Just Money

In a sideshow to the main debate over ESEA, the Senate passed an amendment on May 3 that would add $18.1 billion to the federal budget for special education over the next 10 years and would change special ed funding into an entitlement that Congress would be required to fund regardless of budget considerations.  This measure has drawn criticism from the White House and others for not addre

Just How Bad is the Education Bill?

White House aides have grown testy about the education bill, unwilling to acknowledge that the compromises Congress has forced upon it have sorely weakened George W. Bush's fine reform plan. Presumably because they assented to those compromises, they feel obliged to insist that the plan remains largely intact.Would that it were so.

Can outsiders revitalize urban school districts?

Can a new breed of superintendents--drawn from outside the ranks of traditional educators--transform urban school systems?

Great City Schools

The Council of the Great City Schools deserves plaudits for its ever-greater willingness to speak candidly about educational achievement (as well as its vigorous efforts to boost that achievement).

Fourth Grade Reading

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) recently released the results of the 4th grade reading assessment conducted in 2000. (By NAEP standards, alas, this is speedy: data available just a year after the test was given!) The news is not good: average scores were essentially flat across the 1990's.

Real Results, Remaining Challenges: The Story of Texas Education Reform

by Craig Jerald, the Education Trust (published by the Business Roundtable)

One Day, All Children & The Unlikely Triumph of Teach for America and What I Learned Along the Way

Like many skillful leaders whose successes throw them before the public's eye, Wendy Kopp has her share of detractors, including some within the ranks of the unique teaching corps she created.

Bullying, Violence, Zero Tolerance, and Dodge Ball

Thirty percent of students surveyed in grades 6 through 10 have been involved in either bullying or being bullied themselves, according to a study released by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) earlier this month.

Are Today's High School Graduates Ready?

The Education Trust's newsletter, Thinking K-16, is usually worth a look. The Winter 2001 issue is especially fine, being devoted almost entirely to a careful but exceptionally lucid discussion of U.S. high school results during the period since the Nation at Risk report of 1983 and the declaration of national education goals in 1989. How have we fared?

TIMSS 1999 Benchmarking Achievement Reports

The Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) made quite a splash in the U.S. when its 1995 results came out, mostly because it showed American kids sorely under-performing their counterparts in many other lands in math and science, especially in the upper grades.

Raising Achievement and Reducing Gaps: Reporting Progress Toward Goals for Academic Achievement.

The redoubtable Paul Barton, formerly of the Educational Testing Service,  prepared this March 2001 report for the National Education Goals Panel. Based on NAEP data, it seeks to track and explain state-level performance trends. He's done some interesting "quartile analysis" as well as taken a close look at minority/white achievement gaps.

School Choice: From Theory to Action

For over twenty years, scholars Paul Hill and Paul Peterson have been at the forefront of the effort to bring greater educational options to America?s neediest students. Please join the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, and t

Rhee Quits as Washington, D.C., School Chancellor Amid Clash With Teachers

Rhee-ality Check

Reform Can Move on Without a Hitch

School Reformers Mull Meaning of Rhee's Departure

Education Overhaul Loses Key Player

Report: Only 1 percent of 'bad' schools turn around

Study Finds Bad Schools Rarely Get Better-or Shut Down

Report finds few school turnarounds

Poor Michigan schools staying open, study finds

Dunbar High School shows need for radical change - and persistence

State history standards get 'D'

Report Gives a Majority of States Poor Grades on History Standards

Report lambastes Texas history standards

GOP voice joins curriculum debate

State curriculum for U.S. history flunks evaluation