Teachers nationwide are scrambling to create lesson plans in observance of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, turning for help to new university workshops like "Understanding the World After September 11" and tolerance-heavy lesson plans such as a National Council for the Social Studies lesson about "Osama," a young Iraqi immigrant to the US who is teased at school because of his name.
A remedial reading program with basic phonics instruction and sentences like "Dad had a sad lad," is being taught to 35,000 middle and high school students in the Los Angeles Unified School District this year, much to the embarrassment of students in the program, who landed in these classes due to their low Stanford 9 reading scores.
Is Success for All (SFA) the leading example of evidence-based education in America or is it all smoke and mirrors?
If private school vouchers are offered to all parents living in poor districts (as opposed to being offered only to low-income families), this would lessen income segregation across school districts. That's because many families presently stretch their budgets to pay inflated housing prices in good public school districts.
Most failing schools desperately need new principals, but talented leaders are in short supply. Maryland superintendent Nancy Grasmick has inaugurated an effort to bring well-regarded principals from suburban districts to lead failing schools in inner city Baltimore.
Paul A. Herdman, New American SchoolsApril 4, 2002
Paul E. Barton, Educational Testing ServiceMay 2002
Richard Noeth and George Wimberly, ACT2002
Deborah Nelson, Consortium for Policy Research in EducationMay 2002
Marie Gryphon and David Salisbury, CATO InstituteJune 10, 2002
Getting the incentives right in the high-stakes game of college admissions is always a challenge, but two recent changes-one in the SAT's disability policy, the other in the admissions system of the University of California-are raising eyebrows.
State accountability systems are shining a harsh spotlight on failing schools, and education officials in several states are striving to help those schools turn around.
This fifty-page paper by Cynthia Prince, issues director at the American Association of School Administrators, contends that "offering financial incentives to teachers willing to take on more challenging assignments is essential if we are to staff every school with highly qualified teachers....Changing the way that teachers are paid is critical if we are to attract and hold teachers in the scho
Readers with a stomach for more commentary from the Gadfly's Checker Finn may want to peruse "An Open Letter to Lawrence H. Summers," which reflects upon Summers' first year as president of Harvard.
It is generally agreed that the Supreme Court's decision in the Zelman case issued on June 27 approving the constitutionality of vouchers that would enable parents to receive tax funds to pay tuition to send their children to religious schools as well as to other private and public schools is a landmark change in American constitutional and educational history.
Yesterday brought the official release of a much-hyped and professionally leaked "study" of U.S. charter schools by the American Federation of Teachers, timed to coincide with the union's convention in Las Vegas. In a word, it reeks.It reeks of error, distortion and untruth about charter schools, how they're working, what effects they're having, what we know about them.
In an op-ed published by The Wall Street Journal, Jay Greene warns voucher supporters that the teachers unions, the Harvard Civil Rights Project and others, are already sharpening their knives to attack vouchers on a different constitutional front-the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause-by arguing that vouchers increase segregation.
Supporters and opponents of Edison Schools frequently butt heads over whether Edison-run schools are performing better than similar schools in the same districts.
The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation2002
William J. Fowler Jr., ed., National Center for Education StatisticsJuly 2002
Now that the Supreme Court has shifted the school choice debate back to the political arena, policymakers should abandon their tired assumptions about choice and create a new model of schools based on the principle of "accountable choice," argues the Progressive Policy Institute's Andy Rotherham.
Diane Ravitch and Checker Finn warn that a House-passed bill to overhaul the Department of Education's office of educational research and improvement would damage the federal government's ability to report on the condition of education.
During the National Education Association's annual meeting in Dallas last week, delegates voted to spend several millions to promote the union's agenda for the new No Child Left Behind Act, an unprecedented mobilization around a single issue, according to Mike Antonucci, who filed riveting daily reports on the union conclave for his own Education Intelligence Agency (EIA).
Facing a Ron Unz-sponsored ballot initiative this fall that would gut the state's bilingual education program, the Massachusetts House of Representatives passed a bill Tuesday that would revamp the Bay State's bilingual program in more limited ways.
In November, the NAACP challenged all fifty states to produce five-year plans to dramatically reduce the academic achievement gap between white and minority students. By last Sunday, when the NAACP opened its national convention, all but eleven states had submitted action plans.
