Dueling petitions in Minnesota
For months now, Minnesota's courageous and passionate education commissioner, Cheri Pierson Yecke, has been the target of unrelenting criticism for her team's proposed social studies standards.
For months now, Minnesota's courageous and passionate education commissioner, Cheri Pierson Yecke, has been the target of unrelenting criticism for her team's proposed social studies standards.
Some weeks ago, we noted that Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews was seeking "true life stories" of how NCLB is affecting classrooms, good and bad (http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=133#1658).
J.R. Lockwood, Harold Doran, and Daniel McCaffreyR Foundation for Statistical ComputingDecember 2003
Bryan C. Hassel and Meagan Batdorff, Public ImpactFebruary 2004
Committee for Economic DevelopmentFebruary, 2004
How would Shakespeare do on the new writing section of the SAT? None too well, according to this article in the Atlantic, which scored several well-known writers against the writing criteria set by the College Board, which sponsors America's most prominent test.
The Department of Education is entertaining comments on an important proposed change to Title IX regulations that presently impede single-sex schools.
In Colorado, a bill to create an independent state board to authorize charter schools is facing legislative obstacles. The Democrat who sponsored it says it would help charter schools by providing state, rather than local district, oversight.
Many educators believe it doesn't matter what kids read, so long as they are reading something. We beg to differ. Despite the good intentions of policymakers and teachers who want to improve students' reading skills, especially low-income and minority children, merely spending more time on "reading skills," does not a better reader make.
Much like the "reading wars" between phonics instruction and whole language learning, the K-12 "math wars" have raged for more than a decade. With many defeats and only occasional victories, parents, education reformers, and a number of university mathematicians have struggled against "fuzzy math" in schools.
Frederick Hess and Andrew Kelly, The Abell ReportJanuary 2004
Gail L. Sunderman and Jimmy Kim, Harvard Civil Rights ProjectsFebruary, 2004
American students are being overworked, says an alarmed chorus of newspapers, magazines, and books. As described by the popular media and even some academics, the crisis is reminiscent of Sister Carrie and Industrial era child-labor scandals. "Overbooked: Four Hours of Homework for a Third Grader" blared a recent cover of People magazine.
It is surprising and disappointing to have a couple thousand-word article dismissed in less than a sentence, as "focusing on ancillary issues." That is what happened in last week's Gadfly. Perhaps, after a brief review offered below, some readers will find more of value than did Mr.
While it doesn't have quite the shock value of accusations of terrorist leanings, the battle over three proposed Massachusetts charter schools lacks little for controversy.
In a diverse suburb just outside Chicago, Evanston Township High School officials are thinking about pulling out of NCLB, "saying that the financial benefits might not be worth the trouble." Though the school would still be held accountable to Illinois' "less stringent penalties if students do not meet standards," it would likely not be required to disaggregate student scores as NCLB requires,
True, Rod Paige should not have called the National Education Association "a terrorist organization." Given the times in which we live, the middle word in that phrase might have been better chosen. (How about "hostile"? "Disgraceful"?
Does the Supreme Court's decision in Locke v. Davey - concerning a college scholarship for underprivileged students that was denied to a divinity student attending an evangelical college - have implications for the debate about vouchers and the effort to roll back Blaine Amendments in 32 states?
Walt Haney, George Madaus, Lisa Abrams, Anne Wheelock, Jing Miao, and Ileana GruiaBoston CollegeJanuary 2004
We have only one concern at the news that litigator Clint Bolick of the Institute for Justice will shortly leave that group to head the new School Choice Alliance (formed by the merger of the American Education Reform Council, the American Education Reform Foundation, and Children First America) - that the school choice movement may lose his incisive lawyerly mind in future court battles.
Meave O'Marah, Kenneth Klau, Theodor Rebarber, AccountabilityWorks and the Education Leaders CouncilFebruary 2004
Articles by Frederick M. Hess, Linda Nathan, Joe Nathan, Ray Bacchetti, and Evans Clinchy, Phi Delta KappanFebruary 2004
Good news and bad from Georgia, where the state's Professional Standards Commission recently announced that teachers needn't earn an education degree but can be certified if they pass both the state's certification exam and a standardized content knowledge test called the "principles of learning and teaching." While teachers certified through this alternative process will still have to undergo
The New York State Council for the Social Studies recently released the agenda for its annual conference, to be held in balmy Rochester in March.
In The Language Police, Diane Ravitch lifted the veil on the way "bias committees" at major publishing houses sanitize and censor the information presented in student tests and textbooks.
Last week, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and schools chief Joel Klein (two men who've been at the point of Gadfly's rapier wit more than once) declared that they would hold back third-graders who fail the state's standardized exam. But only after the second failure, and only after the students take summer school for six weeks - and an appeals process will be built in to the plan.
A small intellectual brush fire has broken out among American liberals concerning the No Child Left Behind act.
A notice in the Federal Register seldom elicits more than a yawn from anyone but a few affected bureaucrats and the special interests organized to hound them. But the Department of Education's regulations for educating and testing disabled students under NCLB deserve much wider attention.