Considerable attention has recently focused on a bill (AB 2160) working its way through the California legislature that would expand the scope of collective bargaining beyond wages and working conditions to include matters of education policy such as curriculum and textbooks. The bill has the strong support of the California Teachers Association, the state's largest teacher union.
Katrina Bulkley and Jennifer Fisler, Consortium for Policy Research in EducationApril 2002
In the belief that public understanding of the Middle East will strengthen American security, the government subsidizes the work of Middle Eastern studies programs at universities around the country. But while trying to encourage the study of foreign languages and areas of the world that pose a challenge to U.S.
In recent months, policymakers and policy wonks alike have been singing the praises of value-added analysis, which focuses on the achievement gains that a school or teacher elicits rather than just looking at how high the students score, since high or low scores of students in a school may reflect the socioeconomic makeup of the student body (and other "input" variables) rather than the quality
After California Governor Gray Davis threatened to veto AB 2160 (discussed in the accompanying editorial by Michael Podgursky) if it included a provision expanding collective bargaining to cover curriculum and textbook decisions, the bill was amended by a legislative committee yesterday to prohibit any expansion of collective bargaining, but substituting a new process by which teachers and dist
Council of Chief State School OfficersApril 2002 (draft)
Secretary of Education Rod Paige is asking teachers to help reclaim Memorial Day for its intended purpose of honoring those who have died in service to our country.
Mr. Greene: Superb analysis. I had never considered that full funding of special education costs by the federal government would dramatically increase public schools' incentive to classify challenging children.
Institute for Education and Social Policy, Steinhardt School of Education, New York UniversityDecember 2001
Debora Scheffel, Colorado Department of EducationMarch 2002
Forum for the American School SuperintendentJanuary 2002
Guilbert C. Hentschke, Scot Oschman and Lisa Snell, Reason Public Policy InstituteMay 2002
The miserable failure of most states to implement the requirements of the 1994 federal education amendments in timely fashion had already cast a veil of doubt over the prospects for No Child Left Behind: the stark fact that states don't necessarily make the changes that Washington expects of them-and then get away with it.But what happens when states do comply with the formal requirement
Last week, the Department of Education released the most recent batch of scores on the NAEP history exam, and the results for 12th graders were abysmal.
The No Child Left Behind Act requires school districts to allow children in persistently failing schools to transfer to better (public) schools and to pay the transportation costs for those students to reach their new schools. For thousands of schools, that provision takes effect in September.
New American Schools2002
Teachers who are certified as outstanding by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) are awarded large salary increases in many states and districts, but some researchers have questioned whether the NBPTS is accurately identifying the most effective teachers with its complex and expensive procedures.
Mark Berends, Susan J. Bodilly and Sheila Nataraj Kirby, RAND2002
The U.S. Department of Education released the results of the 2001 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in history today, and while the scores of fourth and eighth graders have modestly improved since 1994, the scores of twelfth graders were frustratingly low and showed no improvement.
The debate swirling around renewal of the major federal law addressing special education, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), draws much of its energy from a widely shared but probably false premise: that schools are increasingly swamped with disabled children who are diverting scarce resources away from other students.
Why have school boards at all? asked Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt in a provocative op-ed this week. We don't elect our city police chief or our county health commissioner, yet nobody sees this as a denial of democracy. Why not let our elected mayors and city or county councils-the people who make the budgets-take similar responsibility for public schools?
Andrea Del Gaudio Weiss and Robert M. Offenberg, American Educational Research AssociationApril 2002
Carol F. Stoel and Tin-Swe Thant, Council for Basic EducationMarch 18, 2002
David Kauffman, Susan Moore Johnson, Susan M. Kardos, Edward Liu and Heather G. Peske, Teachers College Record2002
And now for something completely different, not a book or report but a website. Surf to the MegaSkills website to learn about this education training program, developed in 1972 by Dorothy Rich, a champion of parental involvement in education and founder and president of the Home and School Institute.
Another new Koret Task Force volume from Hoover, this one is edited by Paul Hill, runs 222 pages and, in seven chapters, closely examines the issue of children alleged to be "left behind" by school-choice programs.
edited by Margaret C. Wang and Herbert J. Walberg2002
