In Penfield, N.Y., high-flying math whiz Jim Munch looked to be the poster child for constructivist math curriculum. He scored a 5 on the A.P. Calculus exam, and hopes to become a theoretical mathematician. Turns out, he succeeded in spite, not because of, his school's progressivist training.
My friend, colleague, and boss Gaynor McCown died this week, leaving this earth far too soon at the age of 45. Gaynor started as Executive Director of The Teaching Commission during the same month that I started at the National Council on Teacher Quality. She set up a lunch so that we could meet and talk about how our two organizations could work together.
OK, school reformers, it's pop-quiz time. Take out your # 2 pencils and circle the answer with which you agree.To boost teacher quality, policy makers should:a. Allow principals to hire the best teachers they can find, regardless of credentials; or
National Association of Secondary School Principals2005 National Association of State Boards of EducationOctober 2005
Greg ForsterThe Milton and Rose D. Friedman FoundationOctober 2005
The National Association of Charter School Authorizers is looking for talent.
Several of Ohio's Big 8 cities elected new mayors last week, but none with more radical school reform ideas than Cincinnati's Mark Mallory. Last February, while serving as a state senator, Mallory proposed a plan to allow Cincinnati's mayor not only to appoint the city's superintendent, but also to name all the school board members.
We seek to make information about school choice more accessible. Toward that end, we now have an Excel spreadsheet that lists charter school information for Dayton, Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland. It contains the schools' contact information, latest student counts, financial data, and academic ratings.
There has been a lot of talk lately about value-added assessment in Ohio (including a high profile conference by Battelle for Kids last month). The day is nearing when the Buckeye State goes "value-added." A pilot run is set for next school year and full-scale implementation is set for 2007-08.
In Ohio, approximately 42 percent of school districts have student enrollments less than 1,500.
In the first issue of the Ohio Gadfly, we said that the Thomas B. Fordham Institute is a charter school sponsor; in fact, it's the Institute's organizational cousin, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, that's responsible for our efforts on that front.
School Choice Demonstration Project, Georgetown UniversityThomas Stewart, Ph.D., Patrick J. Wolf, Ph.D., and Stephen Q. Cornman, Esq.October 2005
There was no hero to rush to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's aid Tuesday as California voters pummeled all four of his ballot propositions with "nos." Two of these rebukes were particularly painful for education reformers. Proposition 74 would have lengthened from two to five years the time required for a public school teacher to earn tenure.
For 40 years the United States has struggled to find the right approach to academic standards for K-12 education. Oversimplifying, this quest was catalyzed by the Coleman Report (1966) and A Nation at Risk (1983). The former said we can't rely on fiddling with school inputs to boost school outcomes, while the latter said our outcomes are sorely inadequate.
State capitals have been abuzz with talk of teacher merit pay. Unfortunately, that talk has rarely translated into action (see here) - until now.
Amidst the clean-up efforts in Louisiana, Governor Kathleen Blanco has proposed a plan to allow New Orleans' failing schools (an astonishing 102 of the city's 117 schools) to re-open as charters, free from the miserable New Orleans school board's overbearing regulations.
After months of heated debate, the Kansas State Board of Education officially thumbed its nose at the scientific community. Under the state's newly adopted science standards, Kansas schoolchildren will now be taught (we're not making this up) that not all scientific occurrences have "natural" explanations.
Editor's Note: This commentary first appeared in the New York Times on November 7, 2005.
Julian R. Betts, Andrew C. Zau, and Kevin KingPublic Policy Institute of California2005
It's not news when interest groups ask legislatures for more money, but it's certainly worth noting when they ask legislatures to spend money more wisely. Up-and-coming school reform group First Class Education is doing just that. Funded by Patrick Byrne of Overstock.com fame, the organization advocates for targeting spending on actual classroom instruction.
School construction is no longer about bricks, mortar, and a couple of workers with lunch pails. Today, aesthetics matter. At least, that's the opinion of a pair of school architects from Illinois who contend that their newly developed list of eight design strategies can lead to higher achievement in middle schools.
At first glance, the International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma program appears to be an education reformer's ideal. It boasts a demanding curriculum. It concentrates on core subject areas (experimental science, math, languages, etc.), and it integrates them with a Theory of Knowledge class that shows how the subjects are interrelated.
Abigail and Stephen Thernstom can only wonder: "Is the ghost of George Wallace running New York City's public schools?" Jonathan Kozol seems to think so. He writes in his new book, The Shame of the Nation, that in New York and other big cities one "cannot discern the slightest hint that any vestige of the legal victory embodied in Brown v.
People for the American Way president Ralph Neas writes in USA Today that the Senate's Katrina package (which includes a provision that will provide vouchers to help support private-school families) is an opportunity for right-wingers "to implement an ideological agenda that has little to do with the hurricane itself." Pot calling the kettle black, eh?
Congratulations on getting your theory that No Child Left Behind is causing states to lower their accountability standards into the news cycle (see here).
David SalisburyCato InstituteOctober 4, 2005
Dr. Soo Kim Abboud and Jane KimBerkley Publishing Group2005
It's The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly time at the charter schools corral. And David Brennan, famed industrialist and creator of the White Hat school management company, stars in all three roles. To charter supporters he's the hero, to the teachers unions he's the villain, and as for the ugly, well, keep reading.
