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.
Modernity and its technologies bring many pluses. We can, more or less, learn everything we want to know about everything whenever we want to know it. Thanks to the Internet, 24-hour news, blogs and e-mail, we are awash in information and communication options.We don't have to wait until the morning paper arrives to learn what happened in the world yesterday.
You lament that Idaho's charter schools are funded at only 60-70 percent of the per-pupil cost of the state's traditional public schools and suggest their funding be raised toward parity ("New Idaho charter rules a start").
Just in time for Halloween, an update from the spook file. The blogger Bellaciao (motto: "To rebel is right, to disobey is a duty, to act is necessary!") has apparently unraveled the mystical meaning behind the No Child Left Behind act: it's a reference to the Apocalypse.
This is the New York Times' idea of a balanced story on charter schooling? We'd hate to see the biased story . . . oh, wait, we already did (click here).
Paul T. Hill and James Harvey, editors, The Brookings Institution2004
Richard J. Coley and Ashaki B. Coleman, Educational Testing Service Policy Information Center, September 2004
In 1998, the state of Wisconsin decided that only 15 percent of Milwaukee school children, or about 15,000 students, could receive a voucher under the city's school choice program. Now, as the city is just 100 students away from reaching this limit, a simmering debate over the merit of the voucher cap is coming to a boil.
In a bid to better position himself going into what will be a tough election year, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg "is getting ready to trade away the education of New York City's children for a deal with Gotham's most powerful union boss, Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers." So says Ryan Sager in two recent Op-Eds in the New York Post.
Ev Ehrlich and Tracy Kornblatt, Committee for Economic DevelopmentSeptember 2004
In Alabama, a long and tortuous saga of teacher testing has gotten even more complicated. In 1981, the state began requiring new teachers to pass content tests in the subjects they teach. That law was challenged on grounds that it was racially discriminatory, and in 1985 the state dropped the test, though the lawsuit continued to wend its way through various courts for 15 years.
This week, former chief inspector of schools in England, Mike Tomlinson, released a report proposing sweeping changes to the nation's secondary-school accountability system, which currently requires students to pass achievement tests (A-levels) if they want to continue on to university. The changes would transform the A-levels into a new diploma system over the next decade.
The Washington Post reported on October 19 that PTA (Parent-Teacher Association) membership nationwide has fallen from 12.1 million four decades ago to fewer than six million today. Not even one in four U.S. public schools now has a PTA chapter.
In the midst of the ongoing debate over charter schools, this week's New Yorker includes a profile of one highly successful Boston charter school - the Pacific Rim Academy - that serves as a reminder that charters, while not a panacea, offer hope that the hardest-to-teach students don't have to be left behind.
Sandraluz Lara-Cinisomo, Anne R. Pebley, Mary E. Vaiana, Elizabeth Maggio, RAND Labor and Population2004
Todd Ziebarth, Education Commission of the States2004
Out in Idaho, which came late to the charter school party (the state's charter school law was only passed in 1998), the public is being invited to comment on proposed new regulations that will significantly alter the charter scene there. They're a mixed bag.
The charter movement has long needed a national voice, a gap the new Charter School Leadership Council is looking to fill. And now the new voice has an old hand to lead it: Nelson Smith. We can't think of a better choice. Nelson has worked with New American Schools for several years, has experience as a federal, state, and local policy maker, is a crack researcher, and a helluva nice guy.
Bryan Hassel and Lucy Steiner, Education Commission of the States2004
There's new Europe and old Europe, and now there's the new education philanthropy and the old education philanthropy, according to Rick Hess in Philanthropy magazine. The old version focused on working within the system and making nice with school districts and assorted education interest groups - and much of it expired with Walter Annenberg's failed challenge.
Presidential election campaigns bring out the worst in academics whose partisan yearnings overcome their scholarly scruples.
United States Government Accountability OfficeSeptember 2004
This weekend, French thinker Jacques Derrida, father of the literary method known as "deconstruction," died of pancreatic cancer. His wide-ranging influence on intellectual life on this planet even trickled down into K-12 education, where it has inspired some of our wackier and less responsible pedagogical theorists.
As part of the New York Times' all out assault on education reform this election year, the editorial board (which has yet to retract or correct its misleading editorial on the AFT charter report--click here and here for mo
Dennis Evans, Editor, McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.2005
How do you teach kids to write: through the spirit or the law? That is, should writing be taught through careful attention to grammar, syntax, and composition? Or should the first task be encouraging youngsters to pour their hearts upon the page without regard for subjects, verbs, and objects?
Everyone "knows" that we have a looming crisis in education staffing, as millions of Baby Boomers retire from teaching and school leadership posts and too few qualified people step forward to replace them.
