Sub-Standard Math Standards Get Help

After 17 years of promoting "fuzzy" math, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) has finally found clarity.

Dubious Solutions

Urban Districts Learning to Compete

Competition from charter schools is spurring one of Ohio's most troubled urban districts, Dayton Public Schools (DPS), to improve.So says a new report by the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), which examined the methods employed by DPS and Wisconsin's Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) to respond to the competitive school markets they are in.

Paradise Lost (in the School Cafeteria)

"They eat, they drink, and in communion quaff sweet immortality and joy," wrote poet John Milton of Adam and Eve's life before the fall. But high school students in Lafayette County, Indiana don't have to read Milton to feel the progenitorial couple's loss.

Replicating High-Performing Public Schools: Lessons from the Field

Think creating high-quality schools is difficult? Try replicating them.

National testing goes international

Welcome to Australia, home to kangaroos, dingoes, and an increasingly vocal debate over establishing national education standards.

Dead prose society

To all you would-be term-paper buyers: caveat emptor! The New York Times decided to put the burgeoning number of online essay-writing companies to the test. Promising original, A-level work, these firms cheerily take your topic (and your credit card number) and promise to produce prose and arguments sure to bring tears to your teacher's eyes.

HOUSSE call

Gadfly tries to flutter his wings on the sunny side of issues and therefore resists chiding Secretary Spellings for her recent flip-flop on "highly qualified teachers." It's true, as others

No Longer the Only Game in Town: Helping Traditional Public Schools Compete

Christine Campbell, Michael DeArmond, Kacey Guin, and Deborah WarnockCenter on Reinventing Public EducationSeptember 2006

A Vegas star

The superintendent of Clark County schools (Las Vegas), Walt Rulffes, is asking the state legislature for an expansion of his new school autonomy experiment, which has been running for less than two weeks. The program bestows upon Vegas principals more decision-making authority in return for increased accountability--much like Joel Klein's "empowerment schools" in New York City.

Report on Licensure Alignment with the Essential Components of Effective Reading Instruction

Diana W. RigdenReading First Teacher Education NetworkSeptember 2006

Adrian Fenty: A mayor for everybody?

On Tuesday, District of Columbia voters handed Adrian M. Fenty a decisive victory in the city's Democratic mayoral primary.

Rational numbers

Way back in 1989, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) launched the "math wars" by pushing constructivist, "fuzzy" math onto the nation's schools.

Know your enemy

Weather doesn't attract people to Washington, D.C. The summers are often grey and humid, the winters grey and cold. But at certain moments, Washington can be among the most beautiful cities in the world. September 11, 2001, was such a day.

Luddite oversight

Sixth-grader Abby Adam loves to send instant online messages to her friends, and she could just spend hours tinkering away on the social networking site MySpace.com.

Merciful Malcolm

Malcolm Gladwell--author of Blink and The Tipping Point, bestselling books on shelves from Miami to Mombasa--recently pontificated in The New Yorker on school discipline. His piece denounces the "age of zero tolerance" by pointing to, of all people, Robert Oppenheimer.

Charter chatter

Life was rough for charter school supporters immediately after the release of the recent National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) study of charter schools (see here). But newer test results out of Philadelphia and Massachusetts show that all the anti-charter hype was just more hypocrisy.

Cheeky

School superintendent Roger Schmiedeskamp of Manning, Iowa, is learning the hard way that applying modern management principles to public education can be risky. Greater transparency? Aggressive community outreach? Stripping away all pretense?

Computer and Internet Use by Students in 2003

Matthew DeBell and Chris ChapmanNational Center for Education StatisticsSeptember 2006

The Hidden Costs of Curriculum Narrowing

Craig D. JeraldThe Center for Comprehensive School Reform and ImprovementAugust 2006

American exceptionalism

Free markets, for all their virtues, do a poor job of distributing public goods like education, right? Anti-capitalist gobbledygook, says columnist Robert Samuelson.

Involving Families in High School and College Expectations

At first glance, young Americans' college prospects seem bright. Four in five high-school students expect to complete a college degree, and most parents are behind them, with six out of 10 agreeing a college education is "absolutely necessary" for their child. Sadly, only one-third of all high school students will actually earn a college degree. 

Getting Tough on Weak-Kneed Tests

This school year marks the first that Ohio gets serious about the Ohio Graduation Tests (OGT). Students in the class of 2007 will be required to pass the OGT in order to receive a high school diploma. It's a critical first step on the road to ensuring that the state's high school diplomas carry more weight both with universities and with potential employers.

The Bargainer's Handbook: New Attitude--New Opportunity

Didn't feel the passion of Labor Day? Not to worry. Just pick up the Ohio Education Association's (OEA) new handbook for collective bargainers--complete with the introduction "Prepare for Battle," a rousing call to arms by OEA's own Dr. Strangelove, researcher Patricia A. Turner.

Open Season on Charters

Late summer in Ohio is open season on charter schools. With the release of the Ohio Department of Education's (ODE) state report cards on school achievement, critics have launched repeated volleys aimed at tearing down the state's charter school program. This year's carping is especially vicious as state elections loom in November.

Poor State Standards Need National Attention

Ohio's schoolchildren aren't being well served by the state's mediocre (or worse) learning expectations. That's just one of the findings of Fordham's The State of State Standards 2006, a new report which evaluates state academic standards.

Charting a Path to Graduation and Striving for Student Success

Jason C. Snipes, Glee Ivory Holton, Fred Doolittle, and Laura SztejnbergMDRCJuly 2006

Homework hooey

A.A. Milne had it right: The greatest joy of childhood is the freedom to do nothing. But one can't do nothing forever, as Christopher Robin reminded Pooh in the last of Milne's classic children's stories."I'm not going to do nothing no more," Christopher Robin said."Never again?" asked Pooh.

Hot for teacher

Rocker Eddie Van Halen had a famously tough time concentrating in class and now, thanks to a provocative study by Thomas Dee of Stanford, we know why. Eddie Van Halen's teacher was a woman.

Double dose of standards

Standards-based reform is one of the two driving engines of education improvement in the United States and has been at least since 1989.