Happy ending for the CCA kids
The unfortunate saga of the California Charter Academy, closed for various improprieties last month (click here and here for more), has something like a happy ending.
The unfortunate saga of the California Charter Academy, closed for various improprieties last month (click here and here for more), has something like a happy ending.
Ask most parents to rate the American education system compared to the rest of the industrialized world, and they'd no doubt tell you it is second to none.
The American Enterprise Institute's Frederick M. Hess and our own Checker Finn have three new and overlapping analyses of the No Child Left Behind Act, with particular reference to that law's accountability and choice provisions.
Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty announced this week that three schools in the Land of 10,000 Lakes will pilot a new teacher pay-for-performance plan that he hopes will pave the way toward more ambitious merit pay schemes down the road.
National Association of State Boards of Education2004
Education Commission of the StatesJuly 2004
The Los Angeles Times, anyway. After the recent charter school dustup, we're happy to recommend a column on charters that strikes a good balance and gets the facts - even those that are painful for charter school proponents - right.
"Eighty-three percent of Michigan elementary and middle schools that failed federal achievement standards for at least four years . . . gave themselves As on self-evaluations worth a third of their overall grades" on a statewide assessment system designed to give parents more information about schools, reports the Detroit News.
Editor's note: As Democrats gathered in Boston to nominate John Kerry, Gadfly critiqued the Democratic education platform (see Napping 'til November).
Even in a world awash in spin, we have to scratch our heads at the wildly conflicting storylines developing about the D.C. voucher program. In the Washington Times, vouchers are celebrated as a tremendous success, with demand far exceeding supply, especially in the middle and high school grades.
The Louisiana Board of Regents recently completed a yearlong pilot study that has the potential to shake up the way the state rates its teacher training programs.
This month's Phi Delta Kappan has an article penned by American Enterprise Institute education policy studies director Fredrick Hess and Gadfly's own Checker Finn that looks at the implementation of NCLB's choice provisions with an eye toward whether they are being "conscientiously and constructively implement
The Phi Delta Kappan and the pollsters at Gallup this week unveiled their 36th annual survey of public attitudes toward schooling. The yearly late-August release of this poll is treated as an event of some importance to education writers across the country, who are sure to get a few weeks of chin-stroking and editorializing out of its data.
Center on Education PolicyAugust 2004
Florida Department of EducationAugust 2004
Charter supporters rushed to the barricades after last week's AFT-coordinated blast in the New York Times. Yesterday, 31 policy types and number crunchers ran a full-page ad in the Times rebutting some of the claims made in Diana Jean Schemo's original article.
In case you were swept up in last week's anti-charter uproar, the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post help provide some balance to the debate by highlighting the achievements of two charter school success stories - Edison Schools and the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP).
The South Carolina State reported last week that Milwood Motley and Larry Williams, two professors at Benedict College, were fired in June for not adhering to the university's mandatory grade inflation policy. That policy requires professors to calculate "freshman grades based on a 60-40 formula, with effort counting for 60 percent and academics counting for 40 percent.
The Florida Board of Education made a super choice in naming John Winn the new state commissioner. A former teacher and top aide to outgoing Commissioner Jim Horne, Winn was instrumental in crafting Florida's marquee school accountability measures, including the A+ Plan and the FCAT.
Ryan C. Amacher and Roger E. Meiners, The Independent Institute2004
Southern Regional Education Board2004
Citing the Sunshine State's controversial Blaine Amendment - which states that "no revenue . . .
Deinya Phenix, Dorothy Siegel, Ariel Zaltsman, and Norm Fruchter, Institute for Education and Social Policy, Steinhardt School of Education, New York University June 2004
George C. Leef, American Council of Trustees and AlumniMay 2004 The Hollow Core: Failure of the General Education Curriculum Barry Latzer, American Council of Trustees and AlumniMay 2004
Charter news isn't just the AFT report this week, though it doesn't get any better.
This week's firestorm over the performance of charter schools can be traced to mischief by the charter-hating American Federation of Teachers and a (generally very able) New York Times reporter's susceptibility to being drawn into its web.For months, it appears, AFT analysts have been beavering away at their own analysis of new data from the Nat
We couldn't make it up. Here's the Los Angeles Times on professional development courses that some California teachers are taking to renew their certification and earn higher salaries: "Sara Telona learned the choreography for Mexican folklore dances, mastered the words to folk songs and took a crash course in marimba and xylophone playing. . . .
Teachers' union types are in a snit over Department of Education funding for the Arkansas Virtual Academy (AVA), an online charter school that uses curricula from K12, a venture headed by former Secretary of Education William Bennett.