Students in approximately 8,600 schools across the country must be given the option to attend a higher-performing school this year because the school they currently attend has failed to make adequate yearly progress, U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige announced last week.
After nine months of labor, the President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education has given birth to a stunning report.
Paul Kengor, Wisconsin Policy Research Institute ReportJune 2002
Sean Reardon and John Yun, The Civil Rights Project, Harvard UniversityJune 2002
The Supreme Court's voucher decision last Thursday produced cheers from many quarters, some of them expected (Institute for Justice, Senator Voinovich), others less so (President Bush, New Republic legal specialist Jeffrey Rosen).
When the Department of Education recently reported to Congress on the state of teacher quality and teacher training in America, Secretary Paige concluded that teacher licensure today depends too heavily on training in pedagogy, and recommended that pathways into teaching be created for individuals who lack coursework in education (
A New York state appeals court last week reversed a lower court ruling that the state was not meeting its obligation to provide students in New York City with a sound, basic education.
While the newspapers have abounded with reports of state and school-district concerns about the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the Department of Education last week announced the launch of a demonstration project aimed at helping states put the principles of NCLB into action.
Christopher Jepsen and Steven Rivkin, Public Policy Institute of California2002
Council of the Great City SchoolsJune 2002
In a forceful editorial the day after the Zelman decision, The Washington Post hailed the ruling, restated the need for experimentation, and urged choice opponents not to become fixated on blurring of church-state lines. "We don't belittle the dangers. But the dangers of vouchers are hypothetical ones at this stage.
Monica Martinez and Judy Bray, National Alliance on the American High SchoolMay 2002
National Council on Teacher QualityMay 31, 2002
Last weekend, two dozen accomplished men and women-mid-career professionals from outside the education establishment-spent a weekend in boot camp training to become superintendents of urban school districts in a program aimed at funneling highly talented people into those key roles.
The Supreme Court's Zelman ruling is plainly good for poor children in Cleveland. It also proves beyond dispute that policymakers can, if they want to, craft a school-voucher program that will pass (federal) constitutional muster. Somewhere in America, there are bound to be a few legislators who had been wavering on the voucher issue who will now lend it their support.
After selling Netscape for $700 million, former president and CEO Jim Barksdale and his wife Sally pledged $100 million to help children in Mississippi learn to read.
Annenberg Foundation and Annenberg Institute for School Reform2002
edited by Frederick Mosteller and Robert Boruch2002
Many in the academic world don't like private schools because they believe that society has a duty to develop citizens who are fully autonomous, and they embrace the idea of our nation's public schools preparing students to reflect critically on the traditions they are taught by their parents.
After decades of often animated conjecture and debate, the Supreme Court concluded in Zelman that Cleveland's publicly-funded voucher program is constitutional. The Court's long-awaited decision is good news for choice advocates in general and thousands of low-income Cleveland school children in particular.
The College Board yesterday approved a bunch of changes to the SAT that were spurred by a threat that the University of California system would drop the SAT as an admissions requirement. Last year, UC President Richard Atkinson criticized the SAT for not reflecting high school curricula and offering an advantage to students who can afford expensive test prep courses.
William Lowe Boyd, Debra Hare and Joe Nathan, Center for School Change, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs, University of MinnesotaMay 2002
The Florida "exit voucher" program that allows students in failing public schools to transfer to private schools at public expense will expand this year. Last week, 10 Sunshine State schools received their second F rating in four years, which makes their pupils-roughly 8,900 in all-eligible for the voucher program.
Bryan C. Hassel, Progressive Policy InstituteMay 29, 2002
A new Heritage Foundation Backgrounder contains the findings of a 2001 survey that looked at how members of Congress practice school choice. (A similar survey was conducted in 2000.) It turns out that forty-seven percent of House members and fifty-one percent of senators have children who attend or have attended private schools-percentages far higher than those of the general populace.
Berkeley linguist John McWhorter has made his name in policy circles by arguing, among other things, that black students do poorly in school due to a strain of anti-intellectualism in African American culture that is a by-product of racism.
