At the end of a 108th Congress plagued by partisan rancor and seemingly more devoted to symbolic than substantive progress on a host of issues, a lame duck session just before Thanksgiving managed to produce an unexpectedly promising bill to reauthorize the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which governs special education.
There are achievement gaps and then there are achievement gaps. A Japanese elementary school teacher with decades of experience was fired this month for repeatedly failing a writing exam designed for his students. According to an Osaka education official, the teacher had been placed in a training program to improve his teaching skills in March, but "failed to show any signs of improvement.
When the Advanced Placement (AP) program was established in 1955, it was designed to distinguish high-achieving high school students by giving them access to more rigorous, college-level coursework. Nearly a half-century later, enrollment in AP courses is expanding to include not just the highest-achieving students, but virtually anyone who wants in.
Noel Epstein, Editor, Brookings Institution Press and Education Commission of the States 2004
Tom Loveless, The Brookings InstitutionNovember 2004
Kate Walsh and Christopher Tracy, National Council on Teacher QualityNovember 2004
Has the time come for value-added assessment? That's what some are suggesting in this Ed Week article by Lynn Olson. She reports that 16 states have written to the Education Department requesting permission to explore value-added assessments as a way of meeting NCLB requirements, with Ohio and Pennsylvania moving ahead to install such systems for state testing purposes.
According to the National Education Association, of the 41 states that have reported their NCLB test results from spring 2004, 32 showed improvement in the number of schools meeting their adequate yearly progress (AYP) goals. Cause for celebration? Perhaps. But before anyone makes grand claims, take a careful look at what those numbers mask.
On Wednesday, just after noon, I typed the term "teacher" into the Google news alert search engine. Here are five of the 10 headlines that came back:
Outgoing education secretary Rod Paige is a great education reformer and distinguished public servant who leaves office after four years of accomplishment, candor, nonstop dedication to America's children, and loyal service to the Bush administration.
For the third time since the law was enacted in 1999, Florida's Court of Appeals ruled that the state's Opportunity Scholarship Program, which allows students in failing schools to use vouchers to attend a public or private school of their choice, violates the state constitution's controversial Blaine Amendment.
The latest issue of Education Next came our way this week, and it's a good one. The cover story - Jim Traub's fascinating profile of the Hyde schools, where the focus is on rigorous character education - is a must-read. There's also a trio of articles about options for reworking the antiquated teacher pay schedule.
Patrick J. Wolf and Stephen Macedo, editors, The Brookings Institution2004
Ted Kolderie, Education/EvolvingSeptember 2004
In October, Congress enacted a D.C. appropriations bill that includes a "right of first offer" to charter-school operators to buy or lease surplus public school facilities at a 25 percent discount.
Yesterday, education blogger Joanne Jacobs wrote about a contest, jointly sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and Dickinson College, designed to help teachers address the subject of the September 11 attacks in particular and terrorism in general.
Will President Bush and his invigorated Republican allies in Congress seize their new opportunity to reshape federal education policy for the 21st century?One can hope.
A debate over constructivist versus traditional pedagogy seems to be brewing in Japan, of all places. In the 1990s, Japanese officials partially decentralized the nation's education system and began touting a teaching system that moved away from the drill-and-memorization approach that had marked Japanese education for decades.
The Washington Post Magazine presents a must-read profile of a single mother from D.C. who has made immense sacrifices to get her two children the best education possible. Sheila Hutton is dogged beyond belief in her quest: "Every morning Hutton would call [her daughter's principal] to ensure her daughter was accounted for.
National Association of Charter School AuthorizersOctober 2004
U.S Department of Education / Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), Prepared by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. and Institute of Education ServicesOctober 2004
Bryan C. Hassel & Lucy Steiner, Public ImpactDecember 2003
With the President re-elected and the Senate and the House still firmly in Republican hands, it seems unlikely that No Child Left Behind will be subjected to substantial revision through legislation, as many opponents and critics (and some friends and admirers) had hoped. So send in the lawyers!
Despite an upbeat Education Week story highlighting the support of big-city mayors - including D.C.'s Anthony Williams - for charter schools as a way of transforming urban education, the charter movement continues to hit road blocks in the form of moratoria, caps, budget restrictions, and referendum defeats (see "Educa
On October 16, the New York Daily News reported that "Parents of students in failing city schools filed a class action lawsuit against the Education Department yesterday, arguing the city plans to illegally deny transfers." The suit "seeks to stop the city from denying transfers under the federal No Child Left Behind law." Said one mother (of five-year-old twins) who is party to the cl
In this month's American School Board Journal, Kathleen Vail articulates the need for a dramatic transformation of the American high school.
Last week, we highlighted three races with education implications (click here). Here's what happened. In Florida, former state superintendent and university president Betty Castor was narrowly defeated by former Cabinet Secretary Mel Martinez.
The Education TrustOctober 2004
