...that William F. Buckley, Jr., spoke no English until he was seven years old? Spanish was his first language, French his second. We read volumes about the need to offer pre-K in large part to ensure that a pupil begins Kindergarten??in possession of words the number of which does not substantially trail that of those at the beck and call of most of his classmates.
From: U.S. Department of Education [mailto:OPA@ed.gov] Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 5:06 PM To: U.S. Department of Education Subject: FYI - Reading First Letter from Secretary Spellings
Don't miss this important new study by the National Council on Teacher Quality regarding the preparation of competent elementary-school math teachers. Titled No Common Denominator, it finds, after reviewing a national sample of ed-school-based undergraduate teacher prep programs, that fewer than 15 percent of them require enough of the right kinds of courses. It names names, too!
Construction workers hurting from the roiled real estate market should head to Los Angeles, where the school district is feverishly adding square footage even as its enrollment declines. The Los Angeles Unified School District has lost 57,000 students over the past decade; fewer families are moving to the city and the Latino birth rate has fallen.
How dismaying to read about the 17 girls at Gloucester (MA) High School who, some say, made a pact to become pregnant together. What about finishing high school? Going to college?
Kristen Graham of the Philadelphia Inquirer begins her reportage about the city's experiences with private operators of public schools with this sentence: "In a blow to the Philadelphia School District's historic privatization experiment, the School Reform Commission voted yesterday to seize six schools from outside managers and warned them that they are in danger of losing 20 others i
New Orleans, June 25, 2008: In all the obvious ways, this week's National Charter Schools Conference resembled other major conclaves in big-city convention centers: thousands of people being beckoned by hundreds of "exhibitors" with their stands, stalls, slick pitches, and free samples, as well as by dozens and dozens of "break out" sessions on every imaginable topic.
Perhaps a few Texans have been reading our report on the flaccidity of most alternative-certification programs for teachers.
This is school-reform week in the Bay State, where Governor Deval Patrick is finally announcing a series of policy proposals that would amount to the biggest changes in state education law in fifteen years. What's not clear is whether these will be, ahem, changes we can believe in, or whether the legislature will even find the money to fund any of them.
Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal (see above) earned a victory last week when the state legislature voted to implement a voucher program for New Orleans that he supports. The bill, which received bipartisan support, introduces a venture that will start small (maximum participation is 1,500) and offer vouchers only to students in grades k-3. But its accountability measures are promising.
Center for American ProgressJune 2008
Directed by Alan Raymond and Susan RaymondHome Box OfficeJune 2008
The often educational Sherman Dorn believes that this recounting betrays an ahistorical mindset because "the early 1970s [were] a time when everyone was complaining about the misbehavior and immorality of youth." If the topic of discuss
Not really. But Rick Hess and Jay Greene do??see problems with Florida's Amendment 9, which teachers' unions and their allies are trying to keep off November's ballot.
Fordham hosted a panel event this morning about our recent report, High-Achieving Students in the Era of NCLB.
We assiduously avoided putting a nerdy kid on the cover of our high-achieving students report.
Talk radio is always interesting--it can be hard to get a word in edgewise! But the callers can sometimes bring clarity.
Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts unveiled his education reform plan yesterday--sorta.
Re Amber's fine post: The mayor of Gloucester, Massachusetts, announced that no evidence exists to support the claim that a group of young girls agreed to get pregnant and raise their babies together (althoug
Charles C. Haynes of the First Amendment Center turns in a strong counter-argument explaining why religious charter schools are a "Faustian bargain" that aren't "worth the spiritual costs":
Regarding my review of Hard Times at Douglass High, a teacher (Mr. McDermott) who was featured in the documentary leaves a comment on Flypaper:
The story of the 18 pregnant girls who made a pact to become pregnant at Gloucester High School in Gloucester, Massachusetts, has been all over the news in the last several days. Everyone hearing the story has been understandably dismayed.
A group of charter school organizations including the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, issued a report t
Over at National Review Online, Liam reviews the HBO documentary Hard Times at Douglass High, which chronicles the plight of a failing Baltimore high school.
Mayor Bloomberg will announce today that test scores are way up in New York City. But no one, it seems, thinks the gains are legitimate.
About the short review that Coby kindly mentions: I wrote it for a lay audience, one not tuned in to every shift in k-12 minutiae, and so I didn't dive into the issues as much as perhaps I could have.
A??reader (a teacher, it seems) writes??to the St. Petersburg Times: Did Jeb Bush really say "our education system is an eight-track system living in an iPod world"?
