Last Saturday's Washington Post reported on two underperforming area schools, one on Virginia and one in Maryland. At Maury Elementary in Alexandria-the only school in the Virginia suburbs of D.C. to be identified as "needing improvement" under No Child Left Behind-13 percent of students have transferred to other area schools, private and public.
Two bills before the California legislature would, if enacted, dramatically improve the prospects of the charter school movement in that state.
The latest edition of Education Next, released yesterday, includes several articles that challenge two common education beliefs: that teachers are underpaid and that smaller classes boost student achievement. The conclusions are complicated, though. It seems that great teachers are underpaid but most teachers are not underpaid, relative to what they could earn in other occupations.
An Ohio judge ruled this week that the Buckeye State's 6-year-old charter school law does not violate the state Constitution, gutting major portions of a lawsuit filed by a coalition led by the Ohio Federation of Teachers.
Last month, City Journal published a long article by Justin Kaplowitz, a former Teach for America corps member whose teaching career was abruptly ended after one year when a disgruntled parent filed a frivolous $20 million lawsuit charging that Kaplowitz had hit her child [seehttp://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cf
Gerald Bracey and Alex Molnar, Education Policy Studies Laboratory (ASU)February 12, 2003
With the Supreme Court scheduled to hear oral arguments on the University of Michigan's affirmative action admissions policies in April, the debate over such policies grows ever hotter.
Jay P. Greene, Marcus Winters, Greg Forster, The Manhattan Institute for Public Policy February 11, 2003
I rarely defend the education authorities in Ohio; but I am doing so this time in response to Checker's editorial, Adequate yearly progress or balloon mortgage? [http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=9#367 ]The basic problem with the NCLB goals is their total impracticability.
Erica Frankenberg, Chungmei Lee and Gary Orfield, The Harvard Civil Rights ProjectJanuary 2003
Many have remarked upon the double standard that operates in American education when judging the regular school system versus proposed reforms in it.
Jay P. Greene and Marcus A. Winters, Center for Civic Innovation, Manhattan InstituteNovember 2002
Students in Anglican and Roman Catholic schools bested their public-school counterparts on this year's national English, math and science exams, new figures from the British Department of Education show.
The standards committee of the Ohio Board of Education has approved a new set of science standards that includes a compromise over how to teach evolution in the state's schools, one that will please creationists more than scientists.
Effectively reversing its 1969 decision to grant control over elementary and middle schools to local school boards, the New York legislature earlier this year gave Mayor Michael Bloomberg control of those schools by granting him power over a citywide Board of Education.
National Center on Education OutcomesJuly 2002
American Jews were strong supporters of equal educational opportunity for all children in the civil rights era, but the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee oppose school vouchers (and therefore the Supreme Court's recent Zelman verdict), equating support for this reform with rejection of public education.
Voucher opponents argue that allowing some children to exit public schools for private schools will burden the public system with the most difficult to educate children, who are presumed to be left behind by school choice.
Carol Ascher et al., Charter School Research Project, New York UniversityDecember 2001
Before a packed house earlier this week, the Ohio board of education hosted a two-hour panel discussion on the teaching of evolution and how it should be handled within the state's new science standards.
Two years ago, a commission convened by the Education Commission of the States recommended a new model for school and district governance: instead of running all their schools directly from headquarters, districts would merely monitor the effectiveness of the (public) schools in their jurisdiction.
Two new books offer firsthand evidence that our high schools - even "high-achieving" schools in fancy suburbs - often aren't places where the focus is on learning. For Doing School, Stanford ed school professor Denise Pope shadowed five honors students from a wealthy California suburb for a year.
Joe Nathan and Karen Febey, Center for School Change, Humphrey Institute, University of Minnesota 2001
Montgomery County, Maryland is known for having public schools among the best in the nation, ranking high in test scores and college admissions. But that doesn't mean every school is effective. Especially as the county has become more economically and culturally diverse, its school system has struggled to deal with the challenge of low-performing schools.
The journal formerly known as Education Matters is now Education Next, and the fall issue is now available. Among the highlights: Diane Ravitch, Nathan Glazer, and David Steiner debate whether school choice will destroy our common culture; Jane Hannaway, Paul Hill and Marci Kanstoroom look at what makes Houston the toast of urban school reformers; and Lauren Resnick
