James E. Bruno, Education Policy Analysis ArchivesJuly 26, 2002
Some weeks back, I used this space to describe ways that a state's academic standards may be lowered, including several that occur out of public view.
A host of opposing forces-not a failure of will, goals or effort-is what's retarding urban schools, writes ace journalist Richard Whitmire in the Democratic Leadership Council's Blueprint Magazine.
edited by George W. Bohrnstedt and Brian M. Stecher, CSR Research ConsortiumAugust 2002
The Department of Education has given the Blue Ribbon School award since 1982, but attention has recently been drawn to the fact that not all honored schools can actually claim stellar records of student achievement. Accordingly, the DOE recently announced that test scores and test score improvements will become a major component of the selection process.
As the editor of Teachers As Owners, I couldn't be happier with the conclusion in the recent Gadfly review, namely that "one can't put the book down without noting the chasm between these ideas and the reality of most American schools." (See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=51#770.) Notwithst
A new report from the National Research Council proposes that math and science Ph.D.s, who face fewer job openings in academia, should instead try teaching in K-12 schools, which are in dire need of math and science teachers.
Last week, the Camden city council unanimously approved a resolution asking the New Jersey legislature to award hefty $6,000 vouchers to students in the city's notoriously low-performing schools. The measure-which faces steep opposition from the governor and teachers union-marks the first time a Northeastern municipality has endorsed a publicly funded voucher program.
On Monday, July 29th, New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg named Joel I. Klein, the chairman and chief executive of Bertelsmann Inc., and a former assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration-where he led the antitrust prosecution of Microsoft-as chancellor of the city's public school system.
Seven months after President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act, and one month after the U.S. Department of Education announced that children at 8,652 low-performing schools are now eligible to transfer to higher-performing schools, some states and school districts are giving the new law's approach to failing schools a chilly embrace.
Paul A. Herdman, New American SchoolsApril 4, 2002
Paul E. Barton, Educational Testing ServiceMay 2002
Richard Noeth and George Wimberly, ACT2002
Nearly two thirds of blacks would enroll their children in a charter or private school if given the chance, according to a poll by the Black America's Political Action Committee. Conducted during the week before the Zelman decision, the poll also showed that the majority of blacks surveyed gave public schools a "C" grade or lower when asked to evaluate their condition.
With rewards and punishments now tied to test scores, states can't afford to risk complaints about bias in their test questions, so sensitivity guidelines adopted in the 1960s to address the "culturally lopsided" view of America presented in the reading passages of standardized tests have now stretched to cover "almost everyone in almost every situation." Testing companies avoid mentioning anyt
In "A Knowledge Base for the Teaching Profession: What Would It Look Like and How Can We Get One?" James Hiebert, Ronald Gallimore and James Stigler acknowledge that the U.S. teaching profession does not draw heavily upon a shared base of solid "craft knowledge" grounded in the analysis and communication of what effective teachers have learned. "Practitioner knowledge," they call it.
"Making School Reform Work" is the slightly misleading title of an essay by Checker Finn on the subject of educational accountability in the summer 2002 issue of The Public Interest. It distinguishes three distinct forms of accountability and seeks to evaluate them.
Marie Gryphon and David Salisbury, CATO InstituteJune 10, 2002
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?
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.
Deborah Nelson, Consortium for Policy Research in EducationMay 2002
In "Serving Students With Disabilities in Charter Schools: Legal Obligations and Policy Options," Paul T. O'Neill, Richard J.
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.
That many of our vast public school systems are all but ungovernable doesn't stop the powers that be from searching far and wide for messiah-like figures to lead them. Philadelphia's latest quest for the perfect executive led the City of Brotherly Love to select Paul Vallas, who rides in from Chicago to see whether he can lead another troubled urban system out of educational perdition.
In an editorial in last week's Gadfly, Checker Finn blasted the AFT's new report "Do Charter Schools Measure Up?" A point-by-point refutation of the key conclusions of the AFT's study will be posted later today by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers at
Writing in the summer 2002 issue of Manhattan Institute's City Journal, California State University classics scholar Victor Davis Hanson examines the decline of civic education in America, tracing much of it to the degradation of history and the triumph of multiculturalism and relativism, and suggests (in fairly general terms) what would be needed to revive it.
