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.
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.
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?
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.
Let's say you're training to teach in a tough inner-city school. Where do you go for advice to help you succeed?
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.
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.
Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) chief Eugene G. White has a simple message for his middle school principals. Get results or get out.
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.
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."
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.
Lawrence Mishel and Joydeep RoyEconomic Policy Institute2006
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.
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.
American Federation of TeachersJuly 2006
Anastasia de WaalCivitasJuly 2006
Robert Louis Stevenson knew that those who preach the virtues of play as work are talking about an illusion.
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.
Principal Linda Marlar of Mountain Sky Junior High School in Phoenix thinks her teachers' language skills could use some beefing up.
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
Among charter school networks having a profound impact on low-income student achievement, one stands out. The Knowledge is Power Program, or KIPP.
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.
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
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.
National Center for Education AccountabilityJuly 2006
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.
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.
Center on Education Policy2006
Predictably, Diana Jean Schemo and the New York Times found front-page, above-the-fold space to cover a new National Center for Education Statistics report, drawn from 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress data, that finds private schools only slightly more effective than public when anal
