At last week's American Enterprise Institute-Fordham conference on the No Child Left Behind Act's "remedies" for low-performing schools, paper after paper reported how little use is being made of that law's "public school choice" option for kids whose present schools
For information on Fordham's unique role as a charter school sponsor in Ohio, there's no better source than The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation Sponsorship Accountability Report 2005-06. The report offers a comprehensive account of Fordham's sponsorship policies and practices-as well as individual profiles of all Fordham-sponsored schools. Included in the profiles are descriptions of each school's educational program, school philosophy, and overall academic performance based on state achievement data.
The No Child Left Behind Act has 7 more years to meet its incredibly ambitious goal of educating 100 percent of U.S. school children to no less than "proficient" in reading and math.
What are the odds of being able to grade 45 million standardized reading and math exams without error? If you said less than 1 percent, you're right. In just one recent example of a testing snafu, an Alabama school had a dozen students leave for greener pastures after state tests wrongly labeled it a failing institution.
Krista KaferGoldwater Institute Policy Report #212October 17, 2006
Common sense says principals should be able to hire the teachers they want and need. But in the realm of public education, where common sense is scant, school leaders, entangled in webs of collective bargaining and union-created staffing rules, are often forced to hire teachers that other schools reject. California is the first state to do something about it.
People are up in arms over a book about... gay penguins? Written for children ages 4 to 8, And Tango Makes Three is an illustrated children's book about two male penguins raising a chick as their own.
As far as legislative loopholes go, few are more preposterous than NCLB's provision that districts, rather than submit to serious reform prescriptions for their chronically failing schools, may undertake "any other major restructuring of the school's governance that produces fundamental reform." But while this invitation to tread the path of least resistance usually results in
Linda Seebach takes Gadfly to task in her recent Rocky Mountain News column for dumb demographic data and for leaving key questions unanswered. She's right that our generalizations about Middle America--made in last issue's "Heartland blues"--don't hold up very well in Colorado.
No one can fault governor-elect Ted Strickland's ambitions. After handily winning the governor's seat, Mr. Strickland has promised to reform the state's flawed education funding system--going so far as to stake the success of his administration on it (see here).
Due to broad-based community interest and support, Columbus has been selected by KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) as a new national expansion site in 2008. KIPP officials and leaders in the Columbus community will partner to explore the essential next steps to bring KIPP to Columbus--recruiting qualified school leaders and building a local board of directors.
For information on Fordham's unique role as a charter school sponsor in Ohio, there's no better source than The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation Sponsorship Accountability Report 2005-06.
Do you do whatever it takes for children to learn? Do you want to have a lasting impact?Do you want the power to make it happen?
The latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) will do little to calm growing fears about students' lack of science content knowledge.
National Center for Education StatisticsNovember 2006
Ruth Curran Neild and Robert BelfanzProject U-TurnNovember 2006Turning it Around: A Collective Effort to Understand and Resolve Philadelphia's Dropout Crisis Project U-TurnNovember 2006
Stacy Childress, Richard Elmore, and Allen GrossmanHarvard Business ReviewNovember 2006
Milton Friedman died today at 94. The Nobel-prize winning economist was, among innumerable other accomplishments, the intellectual father of school choice in America. We mourn his passing even as we celebrate his life and work.
Making sense of mid-term elections is akin to making sense of the opening break in a pool game. Casual observers sometimes believe that if the person breaking puts several balls into the pockets, he has the inside track on winning. But experienced players know it's how the remaining balls set up that determines the victor.
Not only did the Democratic Party take control of Congress in last week's election; it also captured a majority of the nation's governorships. And not just on the coasts; Democrats Chet Culver and Bill Ritter won open seats in Iowa and Colorado, and Democratic incumbents held onto their jobs in Illinois, Wisconsin, Kansas, and Oklahoma.
NEA President Reg Weaver must have been flying high without much oxygen when he lauded Southwest Airlines' no-merit-pay policy.
The muddle coming from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) is troubling.
Left-leaning folks who rail against vouchers better start stretching, because justifying their uncompromising stance is going to take added verbal gymnastics. Already this crew is hard-pressed to explain its opposition to lifting low-income and minority students out of failing urban schools, improving public schools through competition, and trying to level the educational landscape.
Hon. George MillerChairman-to-be, House Committee on Education & the WorkforceUnited States CongressDear Mr. Chairman:
The charter school menagerie is bright and varied, and so too are the people who run it. Take Steve Barr, for example.
