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Faith without works
Editor's note: As Democrats gathered in Boston to nominate John Kerry, Gadfly critiqued the Democratic education platform (see Napping 'til November).
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Win with Winn!
The Florida Board of Education made a super choice in naming John Winn the new state commissioner. A former teacher and top aide to outgoing Commissioner Jim Horne, Winn was instrumental in crafting Florida's marquee school accountability measures, including the A+ Plan and the FCAT.
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Slugging back on charters
Charter supporters rushed to the barricades after last week's AFT-coordinated blast in the New York Times. Yesterday, 31 policy types and number crunchers ran a full-page ad in the Times rebutting some of the claims made in Diana Jean Schemo's original article.
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Florida Charter Schools: 2002-2003 Annual Accountability Report
Florida Department of EducationAugust 2004
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Edison and KIPP get it right
In case you were swept up in last week's anti-charter uproar, the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post help provide some balance to the debate by highlighting the achievements of two charter school success stories - Edison Schools and the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP).
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Believing impossible things about education
The Phi Delta Kappan and the pollsters at Gallup this week unveiled their 36th annual survey of public attitudes toward schooling. The yearly late-August release of this poll is treated as an event of some importance to education writers across the country, who are sure to get a few weeks of chin-stroking and editorializing out of its data.
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A for effort, regardless of performance
The South Carolina State reported last week that Milwood Motley and Larry Williams, two professors at Benedict College, were fired in June for not adhering to the university's mandatory grade inflation policy. That policy requires professors to calculate "freshman grades based on a 60-40 formula, with effort counting for 60 percent and academics counting for 40 percent.
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The mid-August massacre
Charter news isn't just the AFT report this week, though it doesn't get any better.
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No August break in charter-land
This week's firestorm over the performance of charter schools can be traced to mischief by the charter-hating American Federation of Teachers and a (generally very able) New York Times reporter's susceptibility to being drawn into its web.For months, it appears, AFT analysts have been beavering away at their own analysis of new data from the Nat
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Not April Fool's
We couldn't make it up. Here's the Los Angeles Times on professional development courses that some California teachers are taking to renew their certification and earn higher salaries: "Sara Telona learned the choreography for Mexican folklore dances, mastered the words to folk songs and took a crash course in marimba and xylophone playing. . . .
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Faulty Towers: Tenure and the Structure of Higher Education
Ryan C. Amacher and Roger E. Meiners, The Independent Institute2004
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Resolve and Resources to Get a Qualified Teacher in Every Classroom
Southern Regional Education Board2004
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K12 kerfuffle
Teachers' union types are in a snit over Department of Education funding for the Arkansas Virtual Academy (AVA), an online charter school that uses curricula from K12, a venture headed by former Secretary of Education William Bennett.
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Letting principals lead
School leaders in Philadelphia, like most everywhere, are currently so hamstrung by teacher contracts and union regulations that they have virtually no control over the hiring and firing of their own staff. In the City of Brotherly Love, however, help may be on the way.
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Virtual District, Real Improvement: A retrospective evaluation of the Chancellor's District, 1996-2003
Deinya Phenix, Dorothy Siegel, Ariel Zaltsman, and Norm Fruchter, Institute for Education and Social Policy, Steinhardt School of Education, New York University June 2004
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Blaine strikes again
Citing the Sunshine State's controversial Blaine Amendment - which states that "no revenue . . .
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Becoming An Educated Person: Toward a Core Curriculum for College Students
George C. Leef, American Council of Trustees and AlumniMay 2004 The Hollow Core: Failure of the General Education Curriculum Barry Latzer, American Council of Trustees and AlumniMay 2004
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Teachers and tradeoffs
The U.S. keeps hiring scads more teachers. Their ranks have swollen markedly faster than school enrollments.
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To Teach and Delight
Gadfly adores poetry, especially when memorized. This is, no doubt, a hangover from his days in fly school, when he was forced to memorize "Paul Revere's Ride," "The Walrus and the Carpenter," and other favorites. Today, such memorization is widely considered a form of oppression if not child abuse.
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Sign of the Times
We're not sure if our endorsement helps or hurts, but we'd love to see Samuel Freedman, now filling in for Michael Winerip as the "On Education" columnist for the New York Times, get the job permanently. By contrast to Winerip, who has only two gears - frothing and grumbling - Freedman is calm, clear, and open-minded.
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1.1 Million Homeschooled Students in the United States in 2003
National Center for Education StatisticsJuly 2004
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A Lesson in Waste: Where Does All the Federal Education Money Go?
Neal McCluskey, Cato InstituteJuly 7, 2004
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Barrier to Learning: How the National Education Association Prevents Students and Teachers from Achieving Academic and Professional Excellence
The Evergreen Freedom Foundation July 2004
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More isn't always better
Analysts beyond counting, beginning with the late, great James Coleman, have shown beyond peradventure that increased spending on education is not related to increases in student achievement. Yet the conventional wisdom still resists that powerful insight.
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The Cost of Remedial Education: How Much Alabama Pays When Students Fail to Learn Basic Skills
Christopher W. Hammons, Alabama Policy InstituteApril 2004
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Understanding Student-based Budgeting as a Means to Greater School Resource Equity
Karen Hawley Mills, Education Resource Strategies and Marguerite Roza, University of Washington, Center for Reinventing Public EducationJuly 15, 2004
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Denying charter schools their due
We've made the case that local districts should not charter schools, since it ordinarily makes one competitor responsible for another's existence - a classic fox/henhouse situation. Some have suggested that this line of thinking is too cynical and doesn't give districts enough credit. Maybe.
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Facts are what we say they are
Talk about "defining success." For years, all 32 of Michigan's teacher-training institutions reported that 100 percent of their graduates passed state certification exams. However, a report from the Michigan education department found that those pass rates actually ranged from 66 to 97 percent for first-time test takers.