Commentary
Closing the College Participation Gap: A National Summary
Sandra S. Ruppert, Education Commission of the StatesOctober 2003
Commentary
Rolling Up Their Sleeves: Superintendents and Principals Talk About What's Needed to Fix Public Schools
Steve Farkas, Jean Johnson, and Ann Duffett, Public AgendaNovember 2003
Commentary
New NAEP, mostly old news
As almost everybody knows, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) last week released - faster than ever before
Commentary
Supes in support of NCLB
Trying to out-sing the chorus of negativism surrounding No Child Left Behind, the Hartford Courant reports that 100 minority superintendents have signed a letter expressing support for the law. "We need to be held accountable. We should not be making excuses like, 'Oh, this kid is from a poor neighborhood,'" said Hartford school chief Robert Henry.
Commentary
Limited consensus on school choice
Two years ago, the Gates and Casey foundations made grants to Brookings to host a group called the National Working Commission on School Choice, chaired by the University of Washington's Paul Hill and consisting of 13 other members, mainly academics, deemed to represent a reasonably wide spectrum of the informed school-choice debate.
Commentary
Apathy in D.C.: It gets worse
In a surprise announcement given after a "hastily called" school board meeting, D.C. school superintendent Paul Vance announced his resignation. When pressed for details about why he was leaving so abruptly, he cited several reasons, including the move by D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams to try to gain control over the beleaguered school system, the system's financial problems, and the D.C.
Commentary
Affirmative action: the sequel
After the Supreme Court's recent ruling in two Michigan affirmative action cases, Gratz and Grutter, legal scholars predicted that a flurry of suits would seek to round out the Court's somewhat confusing jurisprudence on this topic. One of these cases, Doe v.
Commentary
Public schools under pressure in India
An "educational revolution is under way" in India, writes the New York Times, as millions of low-income parents dig deep to furnish private schooling for their children, a luxury once reserved for the well-to-do.
Commentary
The strong-arm of the law
This week, a New York City Council hearing intended to be a debate about the contentious, union-mandated teacher "work rules" (which limit, among other things, how long a teacher can work each day, how schools set faculty meeting agendas, and how teachers are hired and fired) devolved into a heated argument between council member Eva Moskowitz and NYC teachers' union president Randi Weingarten.
Commentary
Meeting NCLB Goals for Highly Qualified Teachers: Estimates by State from Survey Data
Rolf K. Blank, Council of Chief State School OfficersNovember 2003
Commentary
Having Their Say: The Views of Dayton-Area Parents on Education
The Thomas B. Fordham FoundationNovember 2003
Commentary
Seizing the Day: Massachusetts' At-Risk High School Students Speak Out on Their Experiences at the Front Lines of Education Reform
MassInsight EducationOctober 2003
Commentary
Education and Capitalism: How Overcoming Our Fear of Markets and Economics Can Improve America's Schools
Herbert J. Walberg and Joseph L. Bast, Hoover Institution PressNovember 2003
Commentary
New teacher test gets Gem State OK
Good news on teacher quality: the Idaho state board of education has voted to accept the new Passport to Teaching test as a route to certification. Developed by the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, the test makes mastery of content knowledge the central factor in determining whether a teacher is qualified.
Commentary
Sweet victory
In 1999, the then head of the Colorado Springs NAACP, Willie Breazell, Sr. was fired for writing a pro-school choice column - an unforgivable sin in the eyes of the leadership of many African-American pressure groups.
Commentary
Hitting them where it hurts
Call it the last frontier of accountability: a former Louisiana school board member is pushing an initiative to withhold the $800-per-month salaries of school board members who oversee parishes with failing schools. "The accountability system is looking hard at everybody - the children, the teachers. Let's put the school board members in that category," said John Crose, recently of the St.
Commentary
Institutional behaviorism?
"Behaviorism," says the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "purports to explain human and animal behavior in terms of external physical stimuli, responses, learning histories, and (for certain types of behavior) reinforcements. . . . To illustrate, consider a food-deprived rat in an experimental chamber.
Commentary
A new twist for NAEP
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), better known as the Nation's Report Card, has been used for 34 years to test representative samples of students in math, reading, writing, geography, U.S. history, and other subjects.
Commentary
Right idea, wrong charter
At first glance, the move by Barnstable, Massachusetts to transform all of its traditional district schools to charter schools is a bold and worthwhile reform experiment. The fine print, however, shows that plan to be a bit more, well, complex.
Commentary
'Times' gives it the old college try
Though Congress will not complete (nor the Senate even commence) reauthorization of the Higher Education Act until next year, the debate is in full swing.
Commentary
Truth and spin about NCLB
Jay Mathews weighs in with an even-handed column debunking ten myths about NCLB. He gets it pretty much right, managing in the process to tweak both the law's critics and supporters.
Commentary
Public Schools: Comparison of Achievement Results for Students Attending Privately Managed and Traditional Schools in Six Cities
United States General Accounting OfficeOctober 2003
Commentary
Choice, Change, & Progress: School Choice and the Hispanic Education Crisis
Jennifer O. Aguirre and Matthew Ladner, Children's Educational Opportunity FoundationNovember 4, 2003
Commentary
Taking Account of Charter Schools: What's Happened and What's Next?
Katrina Bulkley and Priscilla Wohlstetter, editors, Teachers College PressNovember 2003
Commentary
The Funding Gap: Low Income and Minority Students Still Receive Fewer Dollars in Many States
Kevin Carey, The Education TrustOctober 2003
Commentary
Kicking back at NCLB
Everyone knows that No Child Left Behind has sparked some opposition in the states. But that opposition reached brazen new heights this week, when Utah education officials reported that 95 percent of the state's public school classes are taught by "highly qualified" teachers.
Commentary
Law, litigation, and public education
Yesterday, at a conference sponsored by Common Good at the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, education reformers and researchers (including our own Checker Finn) came together to discuss the educational downsides of excessive litigation and regulation. Teachers and administrators were described as walking on eggshells out of fear of lawsuits.
Commentary
Schwarzenegger: real reformer?
Arnold Schwarzenegger's previous foray into education policy (a statewide ballot initiative on after-school programs) left something to be desired.
Commentary
A lesson in empathy
Social studies teachers across the country routinely try to teach their students "what things were like" at particular times and places in history. Many such lessons, however, are a waste of time.
Commentary
Why competition works - and how it's working
Two examples this week of why injecting competition into the system works. In Minneapolis, word comes that the local district has lost almost 5,500 students in the past five years, mostly to charter schools and suburban schools through open enrollment plans. In response, district leaders say they are looking into making their schools more responsive to the needs and wants of parents.