Displaying 17581-17610 of 17817 results
Commentary
8.22.2001

Crazy things districts do to attract teachers

States and school districts struggling to hire teachers in the final days before school opens are offering all kinds of creative incentives to attract applicants. Among them: redesigning teachers' lounges to resemble quaint New England inns, replacing degree requirements with height requirements, offering free tickets to school plays, and promising unlimited bathroom passes.

Commentary
8.22.2001

How applying to college can warp your mind

Two articles in the September issue of The Atlantic Monthly take a sausage-factory-like look at the college application and admissions process. In "The Early Decision Racket," James Fallows explores how early-decision programs have distorted the admissions process and added an insane level of intensity to middle-class obsessions about getting into college.

Commentary
8.22.2001

Teacher training programs face new competition

For the past hundred or so years, the training and certification of public school teachers has been largely in the hands of colleges of education, but this monopoly is now being challenged by private sector entrants into the teacher training business, explains Robert Holland in "The Rise of Private Teacher Training," an issue brief published by the Lexington Institute on August 10.  Sylvan

Commentary
8.22.2001

The art of polling

This week, Phi Delta Kappa (an "honorary fraternity" of professional educators) and Gallup released their 33rd annual poll of the public's attitudes toward the public schools. Normally polls bring good news or bad news, depending on which side you are on.

Commentary
8.22.2001

Evaluating teachers using value-added analysis

"Doesn't it make sense to link teacher evaluation and measures of student learning?" ask Pamela Tucker and James Strong in an article in the September 2001 issue of the American School Board Journal. Hardly a radical idea, though the NEA is officially opposed.

Commentary
8.15.2001

Confusion about commercialism in schools

Pizza Hut offers free pizza to students who read a certain number of books while rival Domino's rewards schools with free books if the school community buys pizza from its outlets. Do these deals harm students by commercializing schools, as critics suggest?

Commentary
8.15.2001

How to keep good principals

Diane Ravitch

Time magazine and other national media have recently featured the work of a program called "New Leaders for New Schools," which is preparing 15 people to become school principals. This is most certainly a valuable activity and it deserves commendation if, in fact, the 15 people do someday turn out to be not only principals but good principals.

Commentary
8.15.2001

Make ed schools sing for their supper

In a piece in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education, Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation and former president of Brown University argues that we should stop blaming teachers for their professional shortcomings and start pointing fingers at the universities and colleges that train them.

Commentary
8.15.2001

National Center for Accountability to study achievement data and schools

Just for the Kids-the nonprofit group best known for making school-level accountability data available in an innovative, user-friendly website-is now teaming with the Education Commission of the States and the University of Texas to launch the National Center for Accountability.

Commentary
8.15.2001

Opposition to character education from an unlikely source

In this week's Weekly Standard, former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett and Boston University Ed School Dean Edwin J. Delattre take aim at the character education program included in the education bills now before Congress.

Commentary
8.15.2001

Teachers learn to gamble, massage in order to maintain certification

Teachers in many states must accumulate professional development credits to maintain their certification, but those who pushed hard for a recently-enacted recertification program in Illinois were horrified to learn that some teachers are satisfying this requirement by taking courses in Tai Chi, massage, and gambling (conducted at a racetrack, no less).

Commentary
8.15.2001

Starting Strong

Karen Baker

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development

Commentary
8.8.2001

New corps of urban principals breaks barriers to entry

Last week, New Leaders for New Schools introduced its first corps of urban principals, highly-qualified individuals without standard principal credentials who have been given special training and served apprenticeships under master principals before taking the reins of their own schools. Solving the principal shortage will require districts to embrace innovative strategies like this.

Commentary
8.8.2001

Performance Pay Roadblocks

The movement to link teacher pay to performance in the classroom has taken several giant steps forward this year-in Iowa, Arizona, and Toledo, just to name a few places-but it took two steps back last week.

Commentary
8.8.2001

Revolution in the ed schools

Almost everyone agrees that schools of education need an overhaul and Martin Kozloff, a reform-minded professor of education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, explains how this should happen in a manifesto posted on EducationNews.org.

Commentary
8.8.2001

Teach for America instructors outshine experienced teachers

Teach for America teachers perform as well or better than other teachers employed by the Houston Independent School District, according to an independent study by CREDO, a research group based at Stanford's Hoover Institution. An editorial in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution argues that Georgia should also open its doors to prospective teachers like these.