Commentary
No Child Left Behind Act: States Face Challenges Measuring Academic Growth That Education's Initiatives May Help Address
United States Government Accountability OfficeJuly 2006
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It's time to empower low-income parents
When President Bush addressed the NAACP recently, his praise for charter schools and other forms of education choice was met with a mixed chorus of boos and applause.
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Midsummer musings
Muzzling Alfie Kohn is noble work for education reformers, and it's a pity that a misguided Massachusetts judge doesn't get it. Five long years ago, the Bay State's Department of Education threatened to withdraw its funding from an education conference if Kohn were allowed to address it on the topic of standardized testing, which he hates.
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Gimme, gimme, gimme
They may not vacation in St. Barts, but teachers in Southeastern Virginia's booming Norfolk/Hampton Roads region are hardly at the bottom of the salary chain.
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Family feud
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter Sarah Carr is asking all the right questions about charter schools. How much autonomy should they be allowed, and, if they're not performing up to standards, are authorizers willing (and should they be willing) to close them down?
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Pass or fail?
Winding down his tenure as governor, Florida's Jeb Bush received, courtesy of the Miami Herald, a lengthy and mostly fair assessment of his education policies' successes and failures.
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School of knock-knocks
Let's say you're training to teach in a tough inner-city school. Where do you go for advice to help you succeed?
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Core Concerns Overblown
In a recent Columbus Dispatch op ed, Matthew Carr, Education Policy Director at the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, raised several concerns about Governor Taft's "Ohio Core" proposal.
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Democracy on Display in Columbus
Speaker of the House Jon Husted (R-Dayton) and Senator Teresa Fedor (D-Toledo) recently squared off in Columbus, engaging in a 90-minute debate on school choice in Ohio. The debate was hosted by the Columbus Rotary Club.
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Hoosier Daddy?
Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) chief Eugene G. White has a simple message for his middle school principals. Get results or get out.
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The OEA Misfires
With its new report evaluating charter schools, the Ohio Education Association (OEA) launches another salvo in the already polarized charter school debate.Not surprisingly, it's far off the mark.
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DPS on the Move
Dayton Public Schools has found the light at the end of a very dark tunnel. Or as DPS Superintendent Percy Mack said, "Well, at least now we know the light is on."
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No Child Left Behind Act: States Face Challenges Measuring Academic Growth
A recent GAO report suggests that growth models can help all students become academically proficient as required by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Such models could allow states to measure students' academic progress from year to year, making it easier to show growth in student learning and meet Average Yearly Progress (AYP) targets.It won't be easy, though.
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Rethinking High School Graduation Rates & Trends
Lawrence Mishel and Joydeep RoyEconomic Policy Institute2006
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Great leap backward
If you thought injecting political agendas into English and history classes was bad, we've got a doozy for you. In the latest edition of City Journal, Sol Stern writes about a nasty trend whereby progressivist professors (some of them former bomb-makers) aim to hijack not only the "softer" subjects, but hard ones such as math and science, too.
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Earn more, learn less
Mo' money, mo' problems. Hundreds of families who benefit from Washington, D.C.'s voucher program but have enjoyed modest increases in household income are in danger of exceeding its income guidelines and having their scholarships revoked.
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Smart Testing: Let's Get It Right: How assessment-savvy have states become since NCLB?
American Federation of TeachersJuly 2006
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Inspection, Inspection, Inspection! How OfSTED crushes independent schools and independent teachers
Anastasia de WaalCivitasJuly 2006
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A child's garden
Robert Louis Stevenson knew that those who preach the virtues of play as work are talking about an illusion.
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A gift horse, not a Trojan horse
Whenever ed reformers put a new idea on parade, it's expected that the unions will quickly conjure up storm clouds. So it came as no surprise that, a few days after the release of Fordham's weighted student funding (WSF) proposal, the union thunder rumbled.
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Pretty fly at Mountain Sky
Principal Linda Marlar of Mountain Sky Junior High School in Phoenix thinks her teachers' language skills could use some beefing up.
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Slippery slopes
Clive Crook, having just returned from the Aspen Ideas Festival (can the event be as glorious as its name implies?), writes in National Journal that the nation's best and brightest thinkers managed to agree on two things: "(a) better education is the answer to all our problems, and (b) improving education is extremely difficult to do (see how hard we tried?)." Crook disag
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The KIPP Factor
Among charter school networks having a profound impact on low-income student achievement, one stands out. The Knowledge is Power Program, or KIPP.
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The Omega School of Excellence: Starting Fresh
The Omega School of Excellence, one of Dayton's first charter schools, is breaking new ground once again. From its inception in 2000, the school's goal was to teach predominantly African-American students in grades five through eight the academic skills and attitudes they needed to gain entrance to, and successfully compete at, some of the best high schools in Dayton and beyond.
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Echo Chamber: The National Education Association's Campaign Against NCLB
As Dick Cheney and John Edwards squared off in their pre-election debate at Case Western in 2004, three billboards in Cleveland dared the moderator to ask the candidates why taxpayers "pay $1.5 billion to label our top schools failures." The billboards, a reference to grievances against No Child Left Behind (NCLB), were paid for by Communities for Quality Education--a group financed by th
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Private Anxiety
Critics of voucher programs are positively swooning over a recent report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which finds that public school students in 4th and 8th grades score as well or better than their private-school peers.
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Best Practice Studies and Institutes: Findings from 20 States
National Center for Education AccountabilityJuly 2006
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Can Harvard be punished?
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Harvard may forfeit nearly $400 million in alumni gifts this year as a consequence of ex-president Lawrence H. Summers' abrupt exit. Even for mega-bucks Harvard, that begins to qualify as real money, a palpable hit in the pocketbook--a "significant setback" in Journalese.
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Initial public offering
To compete with more lucrative private sector job options and address critical shortages, the Los Angeles Unified School District dangled a new (smallish) carrot in hopes of attracting and retaining math and science teachers. The City of Angels will bestow one-time $5,000 "incentives" on certified math and science teachers who opt for classroom over corporate positions.