As America readies itself for the "anniversary" of the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks, innumerable education groups and experts are again bestirring themselves to tell schools and teachers what to teach their students on this topic. Unfortunately, much of that advice is bad and some is awful.
Test scores in Los Angeles elementary schools are rising nicely and many view such gains as evidence that state and district reforms in math and reading are working. Turning its back on a hodgepodge of exploratory math programs, L.A.U.S.D. standardized its math program and now uses only two textbooks in the elementary grades, both of which stress fundamental skills.
National Commission on Teaching and America's FutureAugust 2002
Pew Forum on Religion and Public LifeAugust 2002
Committee for Economic DevelopmentAugust 2002
Craig Jerald and Richard Ingersoll, Education TrustAugust 2002
John Wenders, Idahoans for Tax ReformAugust 2002
Mary SolidaySeptember 2002
Almost half of New York City's 1200 principals have been on the job for less than three years, and principal retirements are expected to grow in the next few years.
It has often been noted that high-poverty schools tend to be staffed by less experienced teachers. In an online piece at WashingtonPost.com, the always-thoughtful Jay Mathews examines some of the reasons for this and some of the proposed solutions.
The dropout rate for Massachusetts high school students in 2000-2001 stayed steady at 3.5 percent, possibly disappointing critics of the state's new high-stakes graduation exam (MCAS), who had predicted that making the test a graduation requirement would cause dropout rates to skyrocket. In Boston, the rate declined from 9.4 percent in 1999-2000 to 8.5 percent in 2000-2001.
The public school choice provision of the No Child Left Behind act isn't all that different from a federal choice program created two years ago, writes Alexander Russo in this month's Washington Monthly, and the lesson of that Clinton-era program is that providing viable transfer options for children in failing schools is far harder than it sounds.
In many states, teachers (and other state or local government employees) are prohibited by federal law from collecting "spousal retirement benefits" from the Social Security system when they retire if they have state or local government pensions. But a loophole in the law allows them to receive such benefits if they spend a single day-their last working day-in a different job.
The American Federation of Teachers and some other educators are scrambling to distance themselves from the "blame America" lesson plans produced by the National Education Association for use on and around September 11, 2002. The NEA's lessons urge teachers to discuss instances of American intolerance but avoid suggesting that any group is responsible for last September's terrorist attacks.
While many are suspicious of the changes that the College Board and ETS are planning for the SAT (changes made largely to placate the University of California, which had threatened to stop requiring the test), college admissions counselor John Harper argues in the cover story of this week's Weekly Standard that the new test is a big improvement.
The results of the 34th annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the public's attitudes toward the public schools were released on Tuesday, and as in other years, early attention has focused on what those results show about public support for vouchers.
In a long essay in the Summer 2002 issue of Daedalus, Diane Ravitch ponders whether the current round of standards-based reform can solve the endemic education problems that undermine effective teaching of history and literature.
School and classroom websites, once hailed as a way to let parents know what their kids are doing in school, often languish today, with students and parents likely to find only outdated information such as school menus or homework assignments from the previous year.
Naomi Chudowsky, Nancy Kober, Keith S. Gayler, and Madlene Hamilton, Center on Education PolicyAugust 2002
Paul Hill and Robin Lake with Mary Beth Celio2002
Virginia Roach and Benjamin A. Cohen, National Association of State Boards of Education2002
A memo issued by the California Department of Education last month warned parents that they may not home-school their children unless they have professional teaching credentials, the Washington Times reports.
The Heritage Foundation's Krista Kafer has compiled an education "CliffsNotes" of sorts, drawing from data collected by the National Center for Education Statistics and others.
Don't think for a minute that June's Supreme Court decision upholding Cleveland's school-voucher program has opened the floodgates of education choice for American families.
edited by Laura Hamilton, Brian Stecher and Stephen Klein, RAND2002
edited by Lawrence Mishel and Richard Rothstein, Economic Policy Institute2002
Lowell Milken, Milken Family FoundationJuly 2002
Teachers and administrators at a Florida elementary school hope to convince students that the "F" their school received from the state's accountability system really means "fantastic" and "fun." Pep rallies and t-shirts declaiming "F = Fantastic" are just some of the strategies this failing school is using to boost everybody's sense of self-esteem and complacency.
