District schools in Columbus, Ohio, are finally exploring ways to bring students back into the fold. Why now? Because the exodus of students to charter schools is hitting the district in its pocketbook. Last spring, the district set its budget for 2005-2006 based on an estimate of 6,200 students taking the charter option. But so far this year, it's looking more like 7,100 students.
[Editor's Note: The following editorial draws on the 2004 long-term trend NAEP results. These should not be confused with the 2005 "main NAEP" reading results discussed in our October 19 press release, Gains on State Reading Test Evaporate on 2005 NAEP.]
To Idaho, now, where the state Board of Education wants to implement high school entrance requirements. If enacted, all eighth-grade students would need to earn a cumulative C average in four subjects and pass pre-algebra before moving on. Those who do not will - presumably - be retained for another year. That's the catch, though.
Michael Gurian and Kathy StevensJossey-Bass2005
Andrew Rudalevige, Dickinson CollegeKennedy School of Government, Harvard UniversityOctober 2005
Brian P. Gill, Laura S. Hamilton, et al.RAND Corporation2005
Guanglei Hong and Stephen W. RaudenbushEducational Evaluation and Policy AnalysisFall 2005
Good news is hard to come by in New Orleans these days, but this might qualify: the Orleans Parish's school board has agreed to charter all 13 schools in the city's West Bank.
Strong self-esteem and personal ambition aren't lacking in American high school students, but the developed intellectual capacity to achieve those ambitions often is. A new study by the U.S.
Mayor Nagin isn't the only Democrat showing signs of interest in charter schools. The Los Angeles Times profiles Green Dot charter schools founder (and "Rock the Vote" creator) Steve Barr and his campaign to take over a struggling high school in L.A. Who are his strongest opponents?
Those who lament the often sorry state of American public education may content themselves with this Pyrrhic victory: American students don't eat raw innards at school, at least not yet. The word out of New Zealand, however, is that that country's students do, indeed, feast upon entrails in the classroom.
Talk about your unintended consequences. The No Child Left Behind Act made performance test scores transparent so that parents could make good decisions about their children's education and could put pressure on schools to pay attention to the needs of all of their students. The law's writers couldn't have foreseen pupils using the test scores to berate one another.
When negotiations over a new labor contract between New York City's public school system and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) got under way last year, Joel Klein went straight for the jugular. Schools chancellor Klein looked intent on slaying the dragon of obstructionist teacher unionism right in its birthplace.
Sara Mead, Progressive Policy InstituteOctober 4, 2005
U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development2005
Australian parents worried about their children have less to fear from dingoes than from their country's schools. Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson has released a report that contravenes pie-in-the-sky notions about the Land Down Under's outcomes-based curriculum.
This week, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and the Bloomberg administration reached agreement on a new contract for New York City public school educators (who worked without any contract for nearly two years). So who won?
As Paul Peterson explains in the current issue of Education Next, at the heart of No Child Left Behind's free tutoring provision is a blatant conflict of interest, even for districts "in need of improvement" that are not allowed to provide the tutoring themselves: "If parents
What does the phrase "charter school" convey? A common working definition is an "independently operated public school of choice, freed from regulations but accountable for results." Yet all that such formulations of the charter school concept address are matters of structure, governance, and accountability.
Thank you for the "schooled on class" piece, which ran in last week's Gadfly. I have lived in Wake County for the past 12 years, and my eldest child is in the county's public school system.
Susan Colby, The Bridgespan GroupKim Smith, NewSchools Venture FundJim Shelton, The Bill & Melinda Gates FoundationSeptember 2005
Timothy J. Gronberg and Dennis W. JansenTexas Public Policy FoundationSeptember 2005
Education Intelligence AgencyOctober 3, 2005
Kevin R. Kosar Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005
Norfolk Public Schools finally brought home the big one - the $500,000 Broad Prize for Urban Education. A bridesmaid in the competition each year from 2002 to 2004, the district took top honors this year based on the strength of increased reading and math scores, improved graduation rates, and significant reduction in ethnic achievement gaps.
Early this week, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue closed the Peach State's schools for two days in anticipation of an oil shortage caused by Hurricane Rita—a shortage that never happened.
Becoming a public high school teacher after nearly 30 years in business required that I adapt to a culture whose priorities, norms, and incentives are upside down. Public schools operate in ways that conflict with their core purpose - teaching children the basic knowledge and skills required to lead successful adult lives.
The list of high-profile political leaders who talk about merit pay for teachers keeps growing. Gadfly has already noted that New York City's school chancellor Joel Klein is a supporter. Now we can add Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney to the list.
While the spike in oil prices is leading some school districts to cut back on busing (see Christmas in September, below), the New York Times has found one district that is busing more kids than ever. Wake County Public Schools, which serves Raleigh, has for five years embarked on a campaign to integrate its schools along economic lines.
