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Who is Leading Our Schools? An Overview of School Administrators and Their Careers
Susan M. Gates, Jeanne S. Ringel, Lucrecia Santibanez, Karen M. Ross, and Catherine H. Chung, RAND Education2003
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Factors Affecting Mathematics Achievement for Students in Rural Schools
Gene Bottoms and Kathleen Carpenter, Southern Regional Education BoardMay 2003
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High schools at the top of their class
Newsweek, playing catch-up to the influential if overrated college rankings in U.S. News & World Report, has a published the third edition of its list of the nation's 100 best public high schools, based only on rates of participation in AP and international baccalaureate classes.
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Self-serving unions?
Jeff Jacoby, columnist for the Globe, uses - of all things - the Jayson Blair scandal to jump off to a pretty boisterous condemnation of teacher unions.
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Standards and choice to improve education
Standards and choice, say the authors of this very brief policy brief, should go hand-in-hand in raising educational achievement. Robert Holland and Dan Soifer of the Lexington Institute applaud Virginia schools for increasing the number of students who have passed the state's rigorous Standards of Learning (SOL) assessment tests.
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Closing the Achievement Gaps: Using Data to Drive ActionClosing the Achievement Gaps: Collecting and Analyzing Your School's Data
Parent Leadership Associates2003
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Why pay twice?
Public schools in Oregon closed three weeks early this year and the Michigan legislature may allow that state's school systems to operate four days a week.
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No tests = less cash for GA
The U.S. Department of Education announced on Tuesday that, because Georgia is not administering end-of-course tests this year, it has the dubious honor of being the first state to have funding withheld for failure to comply with the 1994 amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).
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Republicans work to remake Head Start
Responding to President Bush's call to improve Head Start, the 38-year-old federal program designed to increase educational opportunities for low-income preschoolers, House Republicans introduced a reform plan designed to close the school "readiness gap" that exists between low-income youngsters and their more affluent peers when they begin kindergarten.
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Training teachers in the Bay State
Boston, like many school districts, faces a double whammy when it comes to teachers. Retention rates are low, with more than half of new teachers leaving the district or even the profession within three years. And more than half of all Boston teachers will soon be eligible for retirement.
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A New Core Curriculum For All: Aiming High For Other People's Children
Patte Barth, The Education TrustWinter 2003Education Watch: Achievement, Attainment, and Opportunity from Elementary School Through CollegeThe Education TrustWinter 2003
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The Effects of Magnet Schools on Neighborhood High Schools: An Examination of Achievement among Entering Freshmen
Ruth Curran Neild, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of EducationApril 11, 2003
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No Child Left Behind: A Guide for Small and Rural Districts
American Association of School Administrators and National Association of State Boards of EducationApril, 2003
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Mapping School Choice in Massachusetts: Data and Findings 2003
Kathryn McDermott et. al., MassINC2003
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CA schools paid extra to do the minimum
A recent article in the Sacramento Bee uncovered a questionable education finance plan in California dating back to 1979 that forces the state to provide extra money to schools that meet bare minimum requirements for carrying out state mandates.
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Crossing the Ideological Divide
As Checker says, it's true that we need better school leadership to improve American K-12 education. With a large percentage of U.S.
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Better Leaders for America's Schools
Few deny that U.S. public schools and districts need better leaders than many of them now have - or that the pressure of NCLB's performance expectations plus the surge of retirements among principals and superintendents will inflame this need in the years ahead. But where to find such people? What to look for? How to prepare them? On what terms to employ them? This week, the Thomas B.
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Profile of Learning pitched in MN
After a five-year battle to replace Minnesota's disgraceful Profile of Learning standards with a more rigorous set of academic standards and accountability - a fight led by Governor Tim Pawlenty and education secretary Cheri Pearson Yecke-the state legislature finally reached a bipartisan agreement to repeal the standards minutes before the close of this year's session.
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Union strikes back in LA board election
On Tuesday, union-backed (and incumbent) Los Angeles Board of Education member David Tokofsky defeated challenger Nellie Rios-Parra in a key runoff election that shifted the board's balance of power back to the union.
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Vouchers and the court, part II
Last year, in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public money could cover tuition costs for children at private schools. Now, the Court is being asked to rule on whether tax dollars can cover scholarships, textbooks, and other types of aid for the study of religion in higher ed institutions.
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Trends in the Use of School Choice: 1993 to 1999
Stacey Bielick and Christopher Chapman, National Center for Education StatisticsMay 2003
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High Schools on a Human Scale: How Small Schools Can Transform American Education
Tom Toch, Beacon Press2003
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The Hidden Crisis in the High School Dropout Problems of Young Adults in the U.S.: Recent Trends in Overall School Dropout Rates and Gender Differences in Dropout Behavior
Andrew Sum and Paul Harrington, The Business RoundtableMay 2003
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Caps, Gowns, and Games: High School Graduates and NCLB
Christopher B. Swanson, The Urban InstituteMay 2003
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Debating NCLB: Part II
Last week I began to "debate myself" about the No Child Left Behind act, covering five NCLB issues that make me, and many others, ambivalent about this ambitious undertaking. [http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=21#125]That was not the end of it. Five more issues warrant pro-con examination.
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Mayor Jerry Brown checked on charter change
Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown went to the California General Assembly last week to lobby for a bill that would allow nonprofit groups, colleges and universities, and mayors to authorize charter schools in that state.
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Stiffening soft America
The war in Iraq got columnist Michael Barone thinking: America's military is chock full of the underskilled, undereducated graduates produced by so many schools. What happened in the intervening years to turn them into the determined, competent soldiers who toppled Saddam's regime?