Displaying 17401-17430 of 17817 results
Commentary
1.9.2002

ESEA, IDEA: It's all about phonics

While the debate over special education tends to focus on its cost - and how much money it takes away from regular education - Congress will get nowhere on this topic until lawmakers begin to view special and regular education as part of a single system, one that is hampered by an all too pervasive problem: that schools are teaching reading in a way that fails to effectively reach millions of c

Commentary
1.9.2002

How not to secure a qualified teacher for every classroom

While the testing and reading provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act have been monopolizing the spotlight, the requirement that all teachers in core academic subjects be fully qualified within four years is starting to attract its share of unfriendly attention.

Commentary
1.9.2002

A new year for education?

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Now that George W. Bush has signed the "No Child Left Behind" act, the flashbulbs have just about stopped popping, and the policy (and media) focus shifts back to terrorism and the economy, the education world will turn to the low profile but crucial matter of translating this thousand-page bill's dozens of programs and hundreds of provisions into schoolhouse practice.

Commentary
1.3.2002

New bill puts value-added analysis in the spotlight

While the costs and benefits of annual tests were debated at great length last year, analysts of the new "No Child Left Behind" education legislation are getting more excited about an opportunity created by those tests: the ability to identify effective schools and teachers using annual test scores.  In a 9-page paper for the Lexington Institute, Robert Holland explains how statistical ana

Commentary
1.2.2002

The high schools left behind by choice in Chicago

In Chicago, 55 percent of public high school students attend schools outside their neighborhoods.  The mobile students are often the better students, who can today apply to a growing array of magnet schools and programs throughout the school district.  A series of articles in last month's Catalyst take a close look at the schools left behind.  The 12 least popular neighbor

Commentary
1.2.2002

Why is Education So Hard to Reform?

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Welcome to 2002. Allow me to open it by recalling nine great obstacles to serious education reform in America - and the (mostly obvious) changes we must make to break through them. You may, if you like, regard the latter as New Year's resolutions.We know more about the quality of our dishwashers than the quality of our children's schools.

Commentary
1.2.2002

New bill puts value-added analysis in the spotlight

While the costs and benefits of annual tests were debated at great length last year, analysts of the new "No Child Left Behind" education legislation are getting more excited about an opportunity created by those tests: the ability to identify effective schools and teachers using annual test scores.  In a 9-page paper for the Lexington Institute, Robert Holland explains how statistical ana

Commentary
1.2.2002

Multiculturalism and assimiliationism after September 11

Will the new feeling of national unity in the aftermath of terrorist attacks set the stage for a turn away from multicultural education, which de-emphasizes the common American culture and teaches children to take pride in their own racial ethnic and national origins instead?

Commentary
12.19.2001

Congress passes Bush education plan

If you've been on another planet this week, you may not have heard that Congress passed the long awaited E.S.E.A. bill, which President Bush intends to sign in January. If you were out of our solar system all year, you might not know that this legislation requires states to test every student in grades 3 through 8 and report the results broken down by subgroup (e.g.

Commentary
12.19.2001

Do charter schools do it differently?

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Just how different ARE charter schools? Everyone knows that their governance is freer, their budgets leaner and their longevity less certain than regular public schools, but how different is what actually goes on inside them? Is it anything that students, parents and teachers would notice? Anything that might make them produce better results?

Commentary
12.12.2001

Why the new ESEA testing requirement will fuel school finance litigation

Why are school finance litigators jumping for joy over the imminent passage of President Bush's education plan?  In the December Washington Monthly, Siobhan Gorman explains that the detailed test scores that will eventually emerge from the plan - which requires that states annually test students in grades 3 through 8 in reading and math - will be a "potential bonanza" for lawyers ho

Commentary
12.12.2001

The story behind puzzling dropout figures

A recent study by the Manhattan Institute's Jay Greene (High School Graduation Rates in the United States) shone a spotlight on the enormous number of students who disappear from school attendance rolls between 8th grade and 12th grade but aren't counted in any official dropout statistics.

Commentary
12.12.2001

Troubling lessons in Palestinian textbooks

In last week's Gadfly, we reported on efforts by the government of Pakistan to rein in some state-funded Islamic schools that breed extremism and violence and provide incentives for teaching modern subjects like science, math, computers, and English.  Hopefully these efforts to promote liberal education in Pakistan will be more sincere than they have been in the schools run by the P