Commentary
Commentary
The Unfinished Revolution: Learning, Human Behavior, Community, and Political Paradox
This provocative book by John Abbott and Terry Ryan argues that our education problem isn't something that can be solved by altering schools but, rather, must be tackled by entire communities. They don't, in fact, believe that today's schools are the right focus for tomorrow's education.
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Can AP courses save inner city high schools?
The May issue of Catalyst, Voices of Chicago's School Reform, contains four articles that examine the district's attempt to use Advanced Placement courses and International Baccalaureate programs to boost student achievement in the Windy City's high schools. http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/05-01/0501toc.htm
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Catalyst for Cleveland Schools: Mayors in Charge
The May/June 2001 edition of Catalyst for Cleveland Schools is out and it focuses on the effectiveness of mayors in reforming education, with a close look at four cities - Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, and Detroit. In Cleveland, Mayor Michael R. White has distinguished himself by having a lot of power but rarely showing it, more often allowing school chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett to lead.
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Catholic Schools in New York City
Raymond Domanico has written a 26-page report comparing the academic performance of New York City's Catholic elementary schools with the city's public schools.
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Change is the name of the game in Memphis
The American Association of School Administrators named Gerry House superintendent of the year in 1999. House was hailed by her peers as a visionary, in part for insisting that all 165 schools in her Memphis school district implement a comprehensive reform model. She also won one of the coveted McGraw education prizes for this work.
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Charter School Prospects
Not all charter school news is good, in part because not all the schools are good. Recent state proficiency test scores for many Ohio charters, for example, were pretty disheartening. Everyone knows that Texas has a handful of inadequate charter schools. So are a few in the nation's capital.
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Education at a Glance 2001
The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) is becoming a steadily more useful source of interesting and worthwhile education data, much of it contained in the now-annual publication named Education at a Glance.
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Ahead of the Class: A Handbook for Preparing New Teachers from New Sources
Much ink has been spilled over the alarming estimate that our schools will need upwards of 2 million new teachers by 2010. Some U.S. schools are already experiencing a teacher shortage.
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A Jay Mathews hat trick
If you read the Washington Post, you may already have seen reporter Jay Mathews' article about the Saxon math program, which helps children learn but which the powers that be in most school districts refuse to adopt.
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Turning themselves around after being failed by the public schools
In Washington, DC, where the high school graduation rate is only 57 percent, what happens to the other 43 percent? Many later try to earn their diplomas by passing the GED, but only 34 percent of those taking the GED exam in DC pass it (compared to 70 percent nationwide). In this week's Washington City Paper, Garance Franke-Ruta puts a human face on these glum statistics i
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Schools, Vouchers, and the American Public
Terry Moe's important new Brookings book has a title meant to recall his and John Chubb's influential 1990 work (also published by Brookings), Politics, Markets, and America's Schools. This volume should have an impact, too. Based primarily on a massive 1995 survey, it analyzes U.S. public opinion on vouchers more thoroughly and exhaustively than anyone has ever done.
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Is special education untouchable?
Senator James Jeffords may have made special ed reform even less likely when he let it be known that the White House's refusal to boost spending for this program was part of the reason for his decision to leave the GOP, writes Michelle Cottle in this week's New Republic. She explains why real change is unlikely and why that's most unfortunate for children.
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Dewey Does Tokyo
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Japan is overhauling its elementary-secondary education system.
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Evaluations of Privately Funded Vouchers
In the past several days, you may well have read assertions by U.S. Senators, explaining their vote against the Gregg amendment to include a voucher pilot program in the big elementary/secondary education bill, to the effect that there is no evidence that such programs work.
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A New Era of School Reform: Going Where the Research Takes Us
This 105-page study, prepared by Robert J. Marzano of the McRel (Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning) regional lab under contract to the U.S. Department of Education, is an important, albeit rather technical, synthesis of 40 years of research on the characteristics of effective schools and effective teaching.
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Freshmen not ready to graduate from high school in California
California gave its new high school exit exam for the first time this year and newspapers across the state last week made much of the "abysmal" results: less than 45 percent of the state's 9th graders passed the test. While a committee of teachers had recommended that the state set the passing score at 70 percent, the state board of education voted to lower the bar to 60 in Englis
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10 good things we owe to high-stakes testing
Inspired by the negative character of most commentary on high-stakes testing in the press and the education literature, University of North Carolina psychometrician Greg Cizek has compiled a list of 10 good things that have been brought about by increased reliance on testing in our nation's schools.
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Not enough choices in LA
The Los Angeles Times last month published a parent's sordid tale of gaming the magnet school system in LA Unified School District to help get her child into her school of choice. In the article, Gale Holland described how a system designed to help minority kids escape from overcrowded, substandard schools has morphed into a form of education poker. Students are admitted to
Commentary
The perils of state-level data within a national system
As the big education bill limps through Congress, much debate centers on how to determine whether states are making real achievement gains, how to track those gains (or losses), and how best to compare states with each other - and with the country.
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Performance-Based Pay for Teachers in Wisconsin: Options and Opportunities, Wisconsin Policy Research Institute
Here's another worthy product of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, setting forth the issues that the Badger State would have to grapple with if it wanted to institute some form of performance- or merit-based compensation system for its public school teachers. This analysis focuses specifically on school-wide performance pay systems, i.e.
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Phi Delta Kappan, May 2001
I'd immediately drop my membership in Phi Delta Kappa, an educators' honor society of sorts, except then I'd lose my subscription to its eponymous monthly magazine, and that would mean losing touch with the conventional wisdom that I sometimes need to orient myself. With rare exceptions, you can count on this for education geo-positioning: you want to be pointed approximately 180??
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Potpourri
In a commentary published by the Hoover Institution which appeared in assorted magazines this week, Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby explains how she overcame her skepticism about standardized testing when she realized how cost-effective it is as a tool to foster desirable education change.
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Colorado Teacher Education 2000: A Review of Four Institutions, Colorado Commission on Higher Education/National Association of Scholars
The Colorado Commission on Higher Education (CCHE) wanted to determine whether the state's ed schools were tailoring their teacher training programs to the state's academic standards for students as well as to new performance standards (set by the state Board of Education) for schools of education. The CCHE asked the National Association of Scholars (NAS) to examine four teacher ed programs.
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Navigating Newly Chartered Waters: An Analysis of Texas Charter School Performance, Texas Public Policy Forum
The charter schools of the Lone Star State have been much in the news of late, particularly as the legislature grappled with a possible moratorium on their creation. That didn't happen, but people are understandably interested in how they're doing. After all, by 1999-2000, there were 142 such schools enrolling nearly 25,000 youngsters. How are they doing?
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Technology Counts 2001: The New Divides
Education Week's annual assessment of technology and education holds few surprises, but it does highlight an interesting shift in the terms of the education technology debate, from an emphasis on how many computers can be found in each classroom to how well (and for what) they are being used.
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The Betrayed Generation: Standards in British Schools 195-2
The indefatigable John Marks has been one of the closest and most critical observers of British education. This report from the London-based Centre for Policy Studies is an informed critique of British education standards and performance. It includes an interesting comparison between the "selective" system of Northern Ireland and the "comprehensive" system of England.
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Washington Education Watch: No Rest for the Weary
In case you thought mauling President Bush's ESEA plan was the only education business facing the 107th Congress, think again. A big sign belongs over the Beltway saying "Caution: Special Ed Ahead." By October 2002, Senate and House are supposed to reauthorize the expiring portions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which drives most special education policy in the U.S.