- Doctors, lawyers, and … teachers? If Democrats for Education Reform gets its way, this list of occupations will no longer prompt the question of which one doesn’t belong. Professionalizing teaching is the focus of the group’s latest white paper, Ticket to Teach, which proposes raising teacher salaries (to a minimum of $65,000) and recruiting the nation’s top students to teacher training programs, among other ideas. Check out the paper for yourself here.
- Is a choice between a bad school and a worse school really a choice? Not according to the American Enterprise Institute’s latest policy analysis, Choice without Options: Why School Choice Is Less Than It Seems in Washington, D.C. Many DC parents have to choose between a failing local school and an almost-failing school a couple zip codes away, the report’s authors say. Find out why here.
- The Sunshine State is brighter than ever after the gains educational achievement of its elementary school students, as reported by former Governor Jeb Bush in the Wall Street Journal. According to Florida State reading tests almost half of Florida’s fourth graders were illiterate in 1998; today, 72 percent of fourth graders can read. What led to this dramatic improvement? Click here to find out.
- Students in the United States are falling behind globally in math, reading, and science according to the newest PISA scores, as Fordham’s Checker Finn lamented several weeks ago. Our own Janie Scull looked at Ohio’s performance on the 8th grade NAEP mathematics assessment and its slow rate of improvement, and concluded that at this pace, the state will not have the same proportion of advanced math students as Korea until 2056, as Hong Kong until 2059, and as Taiwan until 2070. (The analysis assumes no future improvement in these countries’ performance.) Sobering, indeed.
- Michelle Rhee, infamous former chancellor of DC Public Schools, founder of The New Teacher Project, Teach For America alum, and Ohio native, now has a new affiliation that’s earned her even more star power in 2011. She’s heading up a new education advocacy group, studentsfirst.org, which just released its policy agenda, “A Challenge to States and Districts: Policies that Put Students First.”
