In Defense of Testing Series
My
Encounter with the Politburo of the Peoples' Republic of the Web by Richard Phelps
Is a regular contributor to EducationNews
The World Wide Web is supposed to make the world more democratic, by making more
information available to more people more easily. That assumes, of course, that
information is disseminated throughout the Web in a fair, open, democratic, or,
at least, random way. Is it?
Post
your comments on this article
Center for the Study of Jobs
& Education in Wisconsin And the United States Shared
American Values in American Education and the Anti-assimilation of Common Values
According to Diane Ravitch
By Dennis W. Redovich
Normally Appears Exclusively every Monday
Diane Ravitch says in an article entitled “Ex Uno Plures” published
in Education Next, a publication of the Hoover Institution, “In short, the
public schools should teach a common culture. However, because of the political
and social trends of the past generation, they are not doing so. The burden of
multiculturalism has virtually eliminated any aspiration to teach a common
culture in many, if not most, public schools. The mantra of public education, it
sometimes seems, is “celebrate diversity”.” “Is it possible to teach a
common culture while celebrating diversity? The idea of school choice would be
far less compelling if public education were to reclaim its role as the agency
responsible for transmitting the best of American culture.”
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your comments on this article
One- size-fits-all standardized tests Standardized
Tests: Not A Complete Picture by Sheila G. Flaxman, Ph.D.
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
One- size-fits-all standardized tests assume that every child learns and tests
in the same way at the same time. We know this is not true. A well-planned
assessment program should include, but not be limited to, standardized testing.
These types of tests can provide valuable information to support the
decision-making process in many ways and at many levels: from the level of the
individual to that of the class, the school, and the district. Assessment
results can be used to help make important decisions that can affect school
programs, the community, and the lives of students and their families.
Assessments, in the way they are administered and the way the results are
interpreted and used, all become critical aspects of any school district’s
program. Unfortunately, many teachers are teaching to the test, thus eliminating
real learning.
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your comments on this article
Reason Magazine Schoolhouse
Crock Why George W. Bush’s education reforms
won’t change anything
by Lisa Snell
My son Jacob will be 5 years old this summer, and I have had to face every
parent’s nightmare of discovering where and how to register him for
kindergarten. As the director of an education policy program at a national think
tank, I imagined that I had an advantage over the average parent. After all, my
job is to evaluate charter schools and tax credits, public school choice and
private school voucher programs, homeschooling efforts and privatized school
management. Additionally, I am a member of a Los Angeles urban school
improvement committee. Finding an acceptable school for my child, I assumed,
shouldn’t be difficult.
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your comments on this article
Marilyn Keller Rittmeyer
Will you work to create an accountability system that allows parents to
legitimately compare how schools are doing? Will you work to create an
accountability system that allows for the comparison of the achievement of
similar types of children (e.g. above avg ability vs below avg ability), so that
we can actually know which types of educational programs work best with
different types of pupils? Will you work to require private/parochial schools to
have their students take a fair assessment that is paid for out of public funds,
so that these schools can be compared with publicly funded schools?
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your comments on this article
Pew Internet & American Life Project The
Internet and Education:pdf Findings of the Pew Internet & American Life Project
A Back-To-School Message from Michigan's Superintendent The
Opening of School Still Brings Mixed Emotions
Tom Watkins
Is a regular contributor to EducationNews
The anticipation, fear, exhilaration and excitement, all were building up in me
like a kettle about to blow.
I remember the feeling well. The push and pull that "the day" was
quickly approaching choked me like a size 15 shirt around my size 16 neck. I
wanted the day to get here, and yet I feared it would arrive - kind of like Mom
saying "your Dad wants to see you, young man, NOW!" Post
your comments on this article
The Women's Quartley The Write Stuff:
Christina Hoff Sommers believes schools should teach the lost art of
penmanship
There are exceptions, but here is the rule: Boys are graphologically challenged.
That males have many more problems with penmanship than females is "not
even a question," according to University of Maryland special education
professor and distinguished scholar Steve Graham. "It is one of the better
established facts in the literature." Handwriting is a basic skill that
serves us all our lives. Unfortunately, a problem that primarily affects boys is
rarely on anyone's list of educational priorities. This one could be solved
readily enough, if schools would take the pains they once took to inculcate good
handwriting.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute An
Undergraduate Education Challenge The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has issued a challenge to
science professors across the United States: Show the same ingenuity in your
undergraduate teaching that you do in your scientific research.
While You Weren’t Watching
By Bill Carlson
Is a regular contributor to EducationNews
Delaine Eastin, California’s State Superintendent of
Public Instruction, wants to ensure all children the right to a safe and
respectful learning environment and the opportunity to develop into healthy,
productive adults. Most schools in America have long held these goals as a top
priority. Even so, during April, 2001, Eastin sent a directive to all
California county and local school district superintendents advising them that
Assembly Bill (AB) 537, the California Student Safety and Violence
Prevention Act of 2000 (approved by outgoing Governor Pete Wilson on
October 2, 1999), has brought revisions to the Education Code.
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your comments on this article
The National Association for Neighborhood Schools has
sent the following letter to Ralph Boyd regarding his position on the Baton
Rouge situation as detailed in the above article.
Ralph F. Boyd, Jr. Assistant Attorney General Civil Rights Division
U.S. Justice Department
950 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Dear Mr. Boyd We are in receipt of a copy of your correspondence to Lucian A.
Mascarella of East Baton Rouge LA. While Mr. Mascarella did not seek our
response to the letter he shared with us, as a national organization we are
obligated to respond on behalf not only of the citizens of Baton Rouge, but of
the entire nation.
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your comments on this article
GOALS 2000 U.S.
RESTRUCTURING SOCIETY THROUGH EDUCATION The U.S. Department of Education is sponsoring two very significant
conferences during November and December 1997. They involve President Clinton's
pledge to make education his number one priority for the next four years. All
educators have a crucial role to play and the public has a compelling interest
in understanding the plan, entitled Goals 2000. This is the program which the
President has made his number one priority.
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your comments on this article
ISTE RESEARCH JOURNAL MARKS TRANSITION WITH
FREE ONLINE ISSUE Free Online Issue of JRTE
(31 August 2001)
A free issue of the Journal for Research on Technology in Education (JRTE) is
now available online at www.iste.org/jrte!
The JRTE Summer 2001 issue marks the journal’s name change from the Journal of
Research on Computing in Education (JRCE).
National Education Association NEA MEMBERS
PROFILED IN PBS DOCUMENTARY
Don't miss "The First Year" Thursday, September 6 at 9:00 p.m. The
90-minute film shows the determination and commitment of five new teachers
struggling to survive their first year in America's toughest schools.
Children First America BISHOP
LEADS FLOCK OUT OF ST. LOUIS SCHOOLS Fed up with decades of St. Louis public school failure, Bishop
Lawrence Wooten of the Church of God in Christ (the second largest and fastest
growing African-American church in the country) has begun the process of setting
up new private schools with the goal of getting 3,000 children out of the
dysfunctional government run system. The Bishop had been attempting to set up
charter schools for years, but had run into a "Berlin Wall" of
resistance from district authorities. Wooten
told the Wall Street Journal that only 42% of students entering St. Louis
government schools finish despite spending $10,000 per pupil. St. Louis has been
spending at County Club rates without achieving Mickey Mouse Club results.
"We wanted to open charter schools, but to save our kids we are going to do
it all by ourselves," Tim Daniels, Wooten’s former marine point-man, told
the Journal. The focus of the new schools will be on academics and parental
involvement. The Bishop’s move is a dramatic sign of the extreme frustration
felt by those left behind in urban school systems. I doubt that it will be the
last...
Center for Immigration Studies "American
Unionism and U.S. Immigration Policy,"
by Vernon M. Briggs, Jr.
Throughout its lengthy history, few issues have caused the American labor
movement more
agony than immigration. It is ironic this should be the case as most adult
immigrants directly enter the labor force. So eventually do most of their family
members. But precisely because immigration affects the scale, geographical
distribution, and skill composition of the labor force, it affects national,
regional, and local labor market conditions. Hence, organized labor can never
ignore immigration trends. Immigration has in the past and continues to affect
the developmental course of American trade unionism. Labor’s responses, in
turn, have significantly influenced the actual public policies that have shaped
the size and character of immigrant entries.
WorldNet Daily
(2 articles)
(2 articles)
Salvation
for government schools? What would you say if I told you there is a
movement under way, endorsed by groups as diverse as People for the American Way
and the Christian Legal Society, to bring the Bible back into government
schools?
The debate is engaged! Exclusive:
Elizabeth Farah dialogues with reader on home schooling
The following is the correspondence exchanged between a reader and myself
regarding my
last column.
MY COLUMN: Government can't educate without destroying the very object of
education: the search for truth. Either government employees dictate
"truth" to the formative youth or the government employee insists that
objective truth does not exist. Either alternative is ludicrous and unthinkable
to the rational mind.
Washington Times Schools,
not government, should select textbooks
I read with great interest the Aug. 8 story "School standards boost test
success." As a publisher, I have a suggestion that I feel will further
improve test scores: deregulate the state textbook selection process. Presently,
twenty-one states have state-level textbook selection processes.
RecordonLine Bowen
quits SUNY New Paltz, will head museum NEW PALTZ: Within the faculty and the community, many people believe
the SUNY board and chancellor forced Bowen's resignation.
SUNY New Paltz President Roger Bowen resigned yesterday, leaving behind what he
deemed a "great job in an ideal place," and ending an embattled
five-year reign at this liberal college.
TIMSS videotapes Professor
Alan Siegel has looked anew at the TIMSS videotapes.
In Japan, Siegel finds teacher-guided instruction (including a wide
variety of hints and helps from teachers while students are working on or
presenting solutions). In both Japanese algebra and geometry classes, he points
out that the tapes contain no evidence of students inventing or discovering new
mathematical principles or solution methods. The students do gain a deep
understanding of mathematical concepts. Japanese lessons do not include a
significant amount of group work before students have worked on their own. The
Japanese math teachers use an interactive teaching approach of "grappling
and telling," together with subtle reinforcement techniques. Japanese
lessons make extensive use of proof-based reasoning. Japanese instruction uses
more lecturing and demonstrations than do traditionalist American math teachers.
Siegel also finds that coding guidelines devised by nonmathematicians have
distorted some aspects of previous studies of the videotapes.
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your comments on this article
Rocklin
parent challenges legality and propriety of Rocklin High School site council
election: Improper
ballot distribution charged; improper candidacy challenged ROCKLIN, California
(27 August 2001):A Rocklin parent
is challenging the legality of the recent Rocklin High School Site Council
election, charging the school district with improper ballot distribution and
untimely ballot counting.He is
also challenging the legality and propriety of a district substitute teacher’s
election to a parent position on the council.
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your comments on this article
Gadfly Taking
aim at AIMS Diane Ravtch
My older sister lived in Scottsdale, Arizona, for many years and her six
children attended the public schools there. Her oldest child, my niece, took
most of her public schooling in Texas and is now a teacher in Florida. The rest
are graduates of the Arizona school system. Whenever I visited her, which I
especially liked to do in the winter, I always talked to my nieces and nephews
about what they were doing in school. My most memorable exchange was about a
dozen years ago, with my nephew Steve.
Post
your comments on this article
NCES The NCES publication "Homeschooling
in the United States: 1999" is
now available in a web-enabled format. In the spring of 1999, an
estimated 850,000 students nationwide were being homeschooled. This
report, based on data from the Parent Survey of the National Household
Education Survey Program, 1999, contains information about the
characteristics of homeschooled children and their families, parent's
reasons for homeschooling, and public school support for homeschoolers.
Lexington Institute SOL
results pinpoint problems Use Virginia's universities to rescue failing schools
By ROBERT HOLLAND
AS VIRGINIA public schools prepare to start a new year, there's good news and
bad news about their ability to meet the state-prescribed Standards of Learning.
Washington Times Foes
cite 'Dirty Dozen´ of collegiate PC By Andrea Billups
College students this fall can enroll in a buffet of courses that tout
"Marx, multiculturalism and malarkey," a conservative education
organization says in its annual "Dirty Dozen" list of politically
correct classes.
Oklahoman Oklahoma
City 'Online' - Schools Should Advance Academics THIS editorial page has, in the past year, often endorsed the
progressive
concept of distance learning for elementary and secondary education. Advanced
Academics, a business based in Oklahoma City, is among the leading firms
involved with this exciting new area in provision of educational services.
Post
your comments on this article
Women's Quarterly (Independent Women's Forum)
Summer 2001 "The
Write Stuff" by Christina Hoff Sommers
Christina Hoff Sommers believes schools should teach the lost art of penmanship
There are exceptions, but here is the rule Boys are graphologically challenged.
That males have many more problems with penmanship than females is "not
even a question," according to University of Maryland special education
professor and distinguished scholar Steve Graham. "It is one of the better
established facts in the literature." Handwriting is a basic skill that
serves us all our lives. Unfortunately, a problem that primarily affects boys is
rarely on anyone's list of educational priorities. This one could be solved
readily enough, if schools would take the pains they once took to inculcate good
handwriting.
Post
your comments on this article
OSEP held a National Summit on Learning Disabilities August 26 and 27th in
Washington DC. CSPAN2 is running the opening session with addresses from
the Secretary of Education, the new Ast. Secretary of OSERS and Lou Danielson.
Many special education faces are in the audience.
The executive Summaries of the papers presented can be downloaded from www.air.org/LDsummit
or through www.ed.gov/offices/OSERS/OSEP.
By Friday afternoon webcast of the presentations will be available through the
sites above. Full text of the papers will be available in early fall.
EDUCATION - HAVE IT YOUR WAY? A
Response to Time Magazine's "Home Sweet School" 8/27 cover story,
by Roxanne Sitler We've all heard the slogan, Have it your way. Most Americans have no trouble
understanding this concept when it comes to having their meal their way. But
when it comes to education, we run headlong into a different mindset.
"What? Have education your way? No way," they say. "The
traditional, statist-style 'Whopper' of education might disappear from the menu!
That just won't do. After all, it's delicious, nutritious and produces happy,
healthy, well-adjusted citizens - 'good' citizens. It's one big, happy hamburger
that's been concocted in the kitchen of government education and society would
starve to death if we had it any other way."
Post
your comments on this article
Let's
Start a Revolution in Public Education Tom Watkins Michigan's Superintendent of Public Instruction
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
As I begin this journey as Michigan's Superintendent of Public Instruction, I
ponder Is the glass half full or half empty with regard to the quality of our
public schools? Being an eternal optimist, I quickly conclude that the glass is
half full. Yet, we have a long way to go to fill it to the top.
Post
your comments on this article
Edison
Faces More Political Than Performance Challenges By Philip Vassallo, Ed.D.
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
Imagine having a child whom you are about to place in your district’s school,
which has a history of low student performance. You do this because of the
district’s promise that a new administration has contractually agreed to
improve student performance. This is what is happening all over the country:
parents place their children in educationally precarious situations in the hope
that the schools will improve.
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your comments on this article
Reason Magazine Teaching
the Bottom Line
First came for-profit schools for kids. Are for-profit colleges for
teachers next?
Sam MacDonald
Contra Costa Times (California)
2nd look at college fund cuts
Contra Costa district applauds Davis' tentative plans to restore money
SACRAMENTO - After hearing protests from community college officials and both
Republican and Democratic lawmakers, Gov. Gray Davis has reversed course to
consider restoring $98 million that he cut from community college budgets one
month ago.
The National Center for Alternative Certification Information The Mall is Quiet; School is Open. Now who is
Minding the Kids? Shortage Update
Almost everyone has heard about the shortage – that entropic mix of
increased student enrollments, reduced student-to-teacher ratios, an aging
teacher workforce, lack of support for novices and new-to-district teachers, low
salaries, and relatively low unemployment. Sources estimate that 2.4 million
teachers will be needed by 2012 (www.nea.org).
The most severe shortages effect the neediest students bilingual, urban and
rural, special education, and technology teachers are urgently needed. Over 73%
of urban schools have immediate needs for bilingual and
English-as-a-second-language (ESL) instructors (www.recruitingteacher.com).
Recruiting teachers for children of color remains an urgent challenge. Forty-two
percent of all public schools in the US have no minority teachers while minority
students make up 33% of total student body enrollment. To date, minority
teachers comprise just 13.5% of the total teacher population.
Post
your comments on this article
Big Brother is coming to your local school "Idea
for an Investigative Reporter" by Donna Garner
Is a regular contributor to EducationNews
Here is an idea for a good investigative reporter Since Texas' public school
accountability system seems to be the model that is being adopted as the
"standard" for other states to use, why doesn't someone do an in-depth
study of the PEIMS (Public Education Information Management System) which the
Texas Education Agency has developed and utilized for many years? I have heard
that over 250 pieces of information on every educator and every public school
child are carried on this database; but to my knowledge, nobody has ever done an
in-depth article on the subject. I know that most school districts have
full-time PEIMS data entry clerks; therefore, there are many people who could be
interviewed regarding the system.
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your comments on this article
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATIONAppropriate
Use of High-Stakes Testing in Our Nation's Schools How Should Student Learning and Achievement Be Measured?
Measuring what and how well students learn is an important building block in the
process of strengthening and improving our nation's schools. Tests, along with
student grades and teacher evaluations, can provide critical measures of
students' skills, knowledge, and abilities. Therefore, tests should be part of a
system in which broad and equitable access to educational opportunity and
advancement is provided to all students. Tests, when used properly, are among
the most sound and objective ways to measure student performance. But, when test
results are used inappropriately or as a single measure of performance, they can
have unintended adverse consequences.
Post
your comments on this article
Association of American Educators Empowering
Teachers to Do Assessment By Linda Plattner
Our dependence on high-stakes testing, particularly at the state level,
continues to grow ("Quality Counts 2001," January 11, 2001, Education
Week). As we begin to feel the impact of high-stakes testing—defined as
testing that includes some subset or combination of rewards and punishment for
students and educators—it has moved to the front pages of newspapers across
the country.
The
Ultimate Stress By Ruth E. Sternberg Five superintendent's stories of coping with the most severe circumstances
on the job. Also: Advice
from experts. Ruth Sternberg is an education reporter for The Columbus
Dispatch in Columbus, Ohio.
When Pigs
Fly and Cats Bark
By Peggy Hinckley It's not improbable, says one veteran superintendent. You can take control
of your life by managing stress. Also: Additional
resources. Peggy Hinckley is superintendent of the Metropolitan School
District of Warren Township, Indianapolis, Ind.
The Care and
Feeding of the Superintendent
By James F. Burgett
A self-proclaimed wellness authority from the school leadership ranks
advises colleagues how to stay alive long enough to draw retirement. Jim
Burgett is superintendent in Highland, Ill.
Physical
Fitness for Busy Bodies
By John Gratto
A superintendent's strategy for getting fit in less time than you might
think. John Gratto is superintendent of the Britonkill Central Schools, Troy,
N.Y.
More Than a
Mascot
By Paul Riede
School system leaders are being drawn into emotional debates over
proposals to replace long-held Indian names and logos as school mascots. Also:
A
Colorado principal's quest to find meaning behind the mascot. Paul Riede
is an education writer with The Syracuse Post-Standard in Syracuse,
N.Y.
Leadership in
the Want Ads By Irving H. Buchen The job postings can tell you a lot about the new realities of the
superintendency. Irving Buchen is a professor of management and communication
in the distance education doctoral program of Walden University, Fort Myers,
Fla.
Center for the Study of Jobs and Education In
Wisconsin and U.S. An
Education Sham in Wisconsin and the U.S.: Higher Education for All By Dennis W. Redovich What is the rationale for
requiring all high school students to complete the requirements for entrance
into a four college in order to graduate from high school? The fact that many,
if not the majority, of the most extreme public proponents of this idiocy are
four year college graduates makes me question the prudence of too many
university graduates, professors and administrators. And an academically
disadvantaged media dutifully reports all the hype and nonsense about the
critical importance of “all” being prepared to attend a four-year college
without any serious challenge or rebuttal.
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your comments on this article
Achieve Statement
of Achieve President Robert Schwartz on 2000 NAEP Math Results
WASHINGTON -- The latest NAEP results in math are
evidence that expecting more from students and measuring schools' performance
can be important levers to raise student achievement. While we have a long way
to go, the push to raise standards over the last decade has led to a doubling in
the percentage of 4th- and 8th graders proficient in math.
American Federation of
Teachers Statement
of Sandra Feldman,
President of the American Federation of Teachers,
on the Phi Delta Kappa Poll of the Public’s Attitudes
Toward the Public Schools
The Phi Delta Kappa poll showing an all-time high public approval rating for the
public schools should take the wind out of the sails of opponents of public
schools. Anytime you have seven out of ten people in favor of working with the
existing public school system to make it even stronger and almost nine out of
ten people saying that we must raise teacher salaries in order to address the
critical teacher shortage, you don’t just have support, you have a mandate to
keep pushing for the things that we know work in our public schools.
Elementary Educators Rewards and
Prizes: Should you use them?
Some teachers love them, while others avoid them. What do you think about
using material rewards in the classroom? See what worked for one third grade
teacher.
Journal American Medical Association Pay
Attention: Ritalin Acts Much Like Cocaine Brian Vastag
Washington Advanced imaging research has answered a 40-year-old
question about methylphenidate (Ritalin), which is taken daily by 4 million to 6
million children in the United States: how does it work? The answer may unsettle
many parents, because the drug acts much like cocaine, albeit cocaine dripped
through molasses (J Neurosci. 2001;21:RC121).
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your comments on this article
Cause on Line Michigan
Board of Ed Out to Gut Special Ed Parent's Power Editorial pertaining to the Proposed
Revised Administrative Rules for Special Education
COMMENTARY By Kim Murphy for the FEAT DAILY NEWSLETTER
Currently, the Michigan Department of Education is in the process of aligning
their state administrative rules for special education with the federal
regulations, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Within this
process, the Department of Education is rescinding the majority of rules that
have been relied upon to regulate special education services offered in
Michigan. This process will shift the burden of enforcing special
education laws from the state level down to the Individual Education Plan
process where many parents are left helpless. There is a tremendous lack
of enforcement here in Michigan, as there is in many states around the U.S.
Parents and organizations alike are horrified that these changes are taking
place and that our input is being given little credence. We are organizing
and we are gaining strength to fight these changes and to hold on to the
regulations that we feel are invaluable in securing appropriate services for our
children.
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your comments on this article
Town Hall Summertime
-- and the livin' ain't easy by Bill O'Reilly
As summer winds down, America finds itself in a rather dubious place. The
economy is terrible, the public-school system isn't much better, and Gary Condit
is a household name.
Children First American DESTINATION:
BANGOR MAINE It was a great pleasure for me to travel to Maine this week to
present a challenge grant to the Maine Children’s Scholarship Fund for its
successful local fund-raising efforts.
Washington Monthly Leave No
Superintendent Behind: On July 12, The Washington Monthly and the Annenberg Public Policy
Center hosted a panel discussion showcasing some leading urban superintendents
and their concerns about current proposals for education reform. Participants
included: Roy Romer, Superintendent of the Los Angeles City Schools, Harold
Levy, Chancellor of New York City Schools, David Hornbeck, former Superintendent of Schools in Philadelphia,
Gene Hickok, Undersecretary of Education
Post
your comments on this article
USA Today Arizona
school-choice plan provides model By Carrie Lips
Tinika Malone is a 31-year-old single mother with four beautiful daughters.
Unbeknown to her, she's also on the front lines of a national debate over the
future of public education.
Cato Institute Arizona's
Scholarship Tax Credit:A New Direction for School Choice?
POLICY FORUM
Monday, September 17, 2001
Featuring Sen. Jon L. Kyl (R-Ariz.), Introduced the Leave No Child Behind Tax
Credit Act of 2001; Lisa Graham Keegan, Chief executive officer of the Education
Leaders Council and former Arizona superintendent of public instruction; Carrie
Lips, Author of "The Arizona Scholarship Tax Credit: Giving Parents
Choices, Saving Taxpayers Money," to be released on September 17 by the
Cato Institute.
Salon Uncurious
George
There's a lot to be learned from the president's encounters with elementary
school students
by Arianna Huffington
Gather 'round, little ones, it's story time. Today's is a scary one. It's about
a president utterly lacking in imagination. It's called "The Very Uncurious
President."
WorldNet Daily The
education tax racket LewRockwell.com So there's this guy named Ray Simon. He's director of the Arkansas
Department of Education, and he's got a complaint about the boom in home
schooling. The way he sees it, this trend is a threat to our, or at least his,
way of life.
Reason Magazine Teaching
the Bottom Line First came for-profit schools for kids. Are for-profit colleges for
teachers next?
By Sam MacDonald
When the Edison Project began as a
controversial for-profit school venture in 1992, the first thing it had to do
was find some students. Those were the good old days. Now that Edison is
teaching the three R’s to 57,000 students in 113 schools across the country,
it faces a tougher challenge: finding enough qualified teachers. The same is
true for public schools, of course. But Edison thinks it has found a solution
that might allow it to leap-frog its public education counterparts in the quest
for instructors: The company is planning to open its own system of one-year
teachers colleges.
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your comments on this article
Hoover Institute What
do tests tell us? by Bill Evers
"One thing standardized tests can tell us is whether the grades that
teachers give their students actually indicate how much the students know."
Post
your comments on this article
Fordham Foundation (2 articles) Personnel
Policy in Charter Schools
When schools are held accountable for results and freed from red tape
governing personnel decisions, they take advantage of their freedom by adopting
innovative strategies for hiring and rewarding teachers, according to this new
report by economists Michael Podgursky and Dale Ballou. This study is based on a
survey administered to a random sample of 132 public charter schools that have
been operating for at least three years.
How
Necessary is Ed School? Chester E. Finn, Jr.
A fundamental issue and long-running debate in U.S. teacher policy—with
profound implications for both the supply and the quality of our K-12
instructional force—is whether all public-school teachers must be
"certified" by their states and, if so, whether they must spend a
prolonged period of time in an "approved teacher preparation program"
on a university campus before they can qualify for certification. Simply put,
must people attend an ed school before they are permitted to teach?
Maple River Education Coalition
The
NAEP Test (NAEP = National Assessment of Educational Progress)
The NAEP test is commonly described as a national academic achievement test. It
is actually far more, and far different, than that. It is a key tool for forcing
the federal mandated value-system and political indoctrination into schools,
under the guise of "measuring educational progress."
Post
your comments on this article
Quick Observations Year
2000 NAEP Math Assessment Richard Innes
California’s drop in 4th grade exclusion, combined with the state’s 5
point score increase, may be one of the biggest improvements in this assessment
series. It is notable that the same situation did not occur for California 8th
grade math.
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your comments on this article
Columbus Dispatch SCHOOLS
SHOULD 'DECOMMIT' TO GOBBLEDYGOOK
By William L. Bainbridge
There's a story that circulated for years among educators about the parent of a
high-school student in Texas who received a notice from the school
administration announcing a meeting for a new program.
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your comments on this article
Science Education Paradox
How Can The Same System Produce Scientific Elites And Illiterates?
The United States by any conceivable measure has the finest scientists in the
world. But the rest of the population, by any rational standard, is abysmally
ignorant of science, mathematics and all things technical. That is the paradox
of scientific elites and scientific illiterates: how can the same system of
education that produced all those brilliant scientists also have produced all
that ignorance?
Post
your comments on this article
Fox News Do
Costs of Sex Harassment Cases Affect College Tuition? Hundreds of thousands of parents are tightening their belts to write
out huge college tuition checks. Others are taking money out of every paycheck
for their younger children's education.
America's Survival $15
Billion Missing From Education Department The report, "Government at the Brink," issued in
June by the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, says that the Education
Department reported in its financial statements that it had $7.5 billion in the
bank when it actually owed that money to the U.S. Treasury. This means that
the department's books are off by $15 billion, about a third of what it
spends annually. But this isn't just a case of bad accounting. Education
department whistleblower John Gard suspects that "senior management
officials" in the department had been "setting up the Agency to rip it
off" and that millions of dollars or more have been embezzled. Gard says
there was no security over the system to prevent embezzlement and no audit trail
to find out where the money was going.
Post
your comments on this article
Buckeye Institute (2 articles) Bargaining
Away Teachers' Rights pdf Imagine you are a public school teacher in Ohio
who is generally satisfied with the representation that your union provides, but
don't like your dues going to support political issues that you oppose.
Your options for relief may appear limited until you discover that Ohio law
allows you to resign from the union and only pay dues for collective
bargaining representation. Teacher unions in Ohio have become wise to this and
made it increasingly
difficult for teachers to exercise this right.
Post
your comments on this article
Policy Note Let's
Try That Again: Remedial Education in Ohio's Universities.
Post-secondary remedial education is slowly on the rise in Ohio. During
the 1998-99 school year, 26 percent of Ohio's recent high school graduates
enrolled in math courses classified as "remedial" at Ohio's public
universities. This represents a three percentage point increase over the
1978-79 school year, the first for which historical data is available.
Post
your comments on this article
Howard Hughes Medical Institute "Overcoming
the Intractable Problem" For many years, colleges and universities
across the United States have sought to increase the numbers of African
American, Hispanic and Native American students who pursue scientific careers.
Yet the College Board reported in 1999 that underrepresentation of minority
students had become even "more intractable."*
National Center for Learning Disabilities (2
articles) New
Reading Guide for Teachers Teaching Reading: A Guide for First Grade is a
new, FREE, 32-page,
two-color guide for educators from the award-winning children's TV show
BETWEEN THE LIONS. The show, which airs daily on PBS, uses music, humor,
puppets, and live action to help teach reading to children ages four to
seven. It features a family of lions-Theo, Cleo, Lionel, and Leona-who run
a library like no other: stories come alive, vowels sing, and knights such
as Sir H and Sir Op joust together to form Hop!
Legislative
News The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have each passed a bill
that
would reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA),
revamping the nation's largest federal involvement in education. During
the coming weeks, Senate and House conferees will meet to work out the
final provisions. Issues related to learning disabilities include funding
for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), discipline of
children with disabilities, and improving reading.
In Defense of Testing Series Educational Testing Service Testing,
Accountability, and Funding Key to Education Reform Kurt M. Landgraf, President & CEO
Educational Testing Service
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
A quick glance at headlines from our nation’s newspapers would have you
believe that Americans are sick and tired of standardized tests in schools.
There are protests by parents and taunts from test takers in front of schools
and state houses. And yet, a far-reaching national public opinion poll says
quite the opposite. An overwhelming majority of Americans are in fact demanding
greater accountability for our public education system—measurement that can be
pro-vided through the proper use of fair assessments.
Post
your comments on this article
Select California Schools made higher gains THREE
YEARS OF PROGRESS IN COMMITTED DISTRICTS AND SCHOOLS
Wayne Bishop
Three districts that I know about, as well as a number of individual schools,
have made a strong effort to get with the California Mathematics Content
Standards. These districts are Azusa and Inglewood, pretty small, and Sacramento
City, pretty large. I started this last year with two years and now there is
another year of data. As last year, the year 2001 math numbers, SAT-9 average
national percentile ranking (NPR), exceed their other SAT-9 scores for all of
2-6 and a 10-15 point spread is common, some as much as 20. Azusa's mathematics
performance made the LA Times, Richard Lee Colvin's special insert "Report
Card" of August 16, "two -thirds of the students are from low-income
households and half are not native English speakers.
Post
your comments on this article
The Guardian (UK) Tested
to destruction
Most of the 600,000 teenagers anxiously awaiting their results on Thursday will
be hoping fervently never to have anything to do with GCSEs ever again.
Exam burden may drop
Houston Review Longhorn
Overpopulation Beth Henary documents how the top ten percent rule has flooded the
University of Texas at Austin and lowered admissions standards.
National Bureau of Economic Research School
Style Can Raise Achievement "Elementary school students with teachers who are 'tough'
graders have fewer disciplinary problems and show greater improvements in their
reading and math scores."
Though state curricular standards have proliferated since 1983, there remains a
stunning lack of consensus about what comprises a good education, an inability
to agree on how one measures it, and a lack of evidence about whether particular
teaching practices or school organizational forms do a superior job of imparting
it. In Do High Grading Standards Affect Student Performance? (NBER
Working Paper No. 7985), authors David Figlio and Maurice Lucas
explore one of these questions.
Post
your comments on this article
The American Enterprise The
Tragedy of School Consolidation By Bill Kauffman
As the school bells ring in another fall, let us recall those benighted days
before the 2,000-student high school, with its Olympic-sized swimming pool,
gleaming array of computers, and anonymous enrollees falling through gilded
cracks.
Center for the Study of Jobs and Education In
Wisconsin and U.S. The
Big Con in Education in Texas and the United States By Dennis W. Redovich
Appearing Exclusively every Monday
The
use of schools and workers as scapegoats for our nations social and economic
problems is a big con. Schools have been bashed by politicians, the business
interests and learned elite forever. Bashing schools is a worldwide phenomenon
and is not confined to Texas. Texas just likes to do things big time. The
con has been conceived by too many people, including educators and public
officials feeding at the trough and is gleefully perpetuated without question by
an academically challenged media.
Post
your comments on this article
KeepTextbooks House
Bill 759 would let children keep their math and science textbooks
Mark Loewe, Ph. D. (Physics)
The Texas Legislature is considering a bill that would
let our youngest school children permanently keep their math and science
textbooks. House Bill 759 by Garnet Coleman (D-Houston) provides that
"For mathematics and science instruction in grades one through six, each
textbook the State Board of Education adopts must have a cost that is low
enough to permit a student to keep the book at the end of the school year, so
that the student may review the core concepts of the essential knowledge and
skills as necessary."
Post
your comments on this article
Texas Public Policy Foundation (2 articles) A Challenge to Texas:
Ethnic Chasm Remains in Mathematics Last week the National Center for Education Statistics released the
2000 Mathematics Report Card for 4th and 8th grade
students in 40 states. The good news is that Texas is one of those leading the
way. The bad news is that there is much more to be done.
Post
your comments on this article
Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (2 articles) The Need to Stand Firm on Flexibility By Mike Judge
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
As President Bush’s education plan has worked its way through Congress over
the past few months, many of the aspects touted by conservatives as the most
beneficial have been removed from the bill. Vouchers, for instance, which were a
hot topic during the election, were quickly cast aside due to their lack in
popularity among Democrats, and even some Republicans. Bush ultimately sought to
move along more bipartisan ground in order that some form of his education plan
would pass Congress.
Post
your comments on this article
Back To School - For Parents As Well
By Daniel S. Konieczko
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
At this time when parents are busily shopping for clothes and supplies to
prepare their children to head back to school, they might want to take a break
from the hustle and bustle to contemplate a more basic question: Can parents
really have a positive impact upon the educational policies that affect their
children?
Post
your comments on this article
Citizen Magazine For
the Children?
The National Education Association says it's dedicated to educating
children, so why is it so busy promoting abortion, homosexuality and a host of
other liberal causes?
By Dick Carpenter
The teacher union boss was not happy.
Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association, had invested much of
his political and professional capital in advancing homosexuality through the
schools. He gave a controversial keynote address at the October 2000 convention
of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educational Network. 1 He had written a
pro-gay open letter this year to U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige. 2
And he pushed for passage of a resolution at the NEA’s annual convention in
early July that would have called for the “involvement of gay…educators in
developing educational material,” and holding up “gay, lesbian, bisexual,
and transgender education employees as role models.” 3
Post
your comments on this article
Home School Legal Defense Association Federal
Alert Update—Committee Considers Step Toward National Test
HSLDA has been battling the expansion of the National Assessment Education
Progrss (NAEP) for five years out of concern that it would eventually become
America's national testing standard. Now our concern is threatening to become a
reality. Many congressmen and senators on the Education Conference Committee for
House
Resolution 1 and Senate
bill 1 are leaning towards a mandatory NAEP test for every state. A
confident National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB—the board responsible for
developing NAEP) is already making plans to change NAEP to match Congress'
potential testing requirements.
ASCD MAKE
ME LAUGH: USING HUMOR IN THE CLASSROOM Tired of spending time after school in detention with
students, a teacher decided to give "accordions" to those who acted
out in class. An accumulation of three "accordions" would require the
offending student to stay after school for a 10-minute session of the teacher
practicing "Lady of Spain" on-what else?-her accordion. Creative
teachers often use humor to deal with one of the more difficult chores they
face-maintaining discipline. In fact, humor in the classroom can be an effective
social tool that builds bridges with students and relieves stress, say educators
and experts alike. Post
your comments on this article
CREDE FIVE
STANDARDS FOR EFFECTIVE TEACHING In stark contrast to the dogmatic, reductionist, controlling,
'one-size-fits-all' curricular prescriptions that have gained so much favor in
the field of education, this Web site proposes a pedagogy that actually respects
the intellect of teachers and students, and that advocates building on their
sociocultural resources in creating advanced, flexible, and diverse environments
for learning.
Post
your comments on this article
Children First America PENNSYLVANIA TAX CREDITS FILLING UP FAST Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge passed a $20 million
tuition tax credit for corporate donations to private scholarship organizations,
and Pennsylvania businesses responded by donating 39% of that amount on the
first day, demonstrating strong business community support for school choice.
Sacramento Bee Test
results show that school reform is still a work in progress
Dan Walters
It's been nearly a decade since Californians were shocked to learn that in
national tests of academic achievement, their children ranked near the bottom,
right down there with the kids in Mississippi.
Business Week What
Makes Sally Learn In the drive to improve the quality of U.S.
education, it's often assumed that shifting to tougher grading standards can
enhance learning, and that "tracking"--putting high achievers in
separate classes--hurts disadvantaged students. A pair of recent National Bureau
of Economic Research studies, however, suggest that only one of these beliefs is
borne out by the evidence.
New
Tax Law Boosts School Construction with Public-Private Partnerships
Fast-growing suburbs, deteriorating cities, and a demographic "echo
boom" of school-aged children have left many communities struggling to
provide adequate classroom space. Provisions of the Economic Growth and Tax
Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 will address that problem for some school
districts by allowing a limited number of communities to transfer the
responsibilities of financing, building, and owning public schools to
private-sector investors who will lease schools to communities. Post
your comments on this article
Education Gadfly 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. Of course, we won't know the answer
to that question for several years. Post
your comments on this article
Colorado Business
Magazine Change
Agent Steve Schuck changed the landscape of Colorado - now he wants to
change our schools
By Alan Katz
It’s natural for Steve Schuck to take an interest in schools. A master land
developer who’s been involved in state politics for two decades, Schuck also
is a onetime teacher and football coach who understood three decades ago the
close connection between Colorado’s economic future and the quality of its
public schools. Post
your comments on this article
Jewish
World Review The
"autism" dragnet Thomas Sowell The U.S. Department of Education and the National
Institutes of Health have launched a campaign to get a government program
created to "identify" children with autism at age two and then subject
them to "intensive" early intervention for 25 hours a week or more. It
sounds good, but so have so many other government programs that created more
problems than they solved. Post
your comments on this article
QUESTIA
launched version 2.0 of Questia today. Version
2.0 includes a vastly improved user interface, better tools, and 60,000 titles.
Questia has achieved their vision of putting a first-rate personal library that
is always available and fully customizable online.
PTO Today PTO
vs. PTA National PTA faces key decisions as local groups increasingly turn to
PTO
By Tim Sullivan
It was perhaps the loudest reaction on the first day of the 2000 national PTA
convention in Chicago this past June. Illinois Superintendent of Schools Dr.
Glenn McGee remembered a day earlier in his career when he made the
“mistake” of referring to parent groups as “PTOs.”
Post
your comments on this article
THE COUNCIL FOR BASIC EDUCATION'S STATEMENT
ON ACT 2001 HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE SCORES Christopher T. Cross, President of the Council for Basic Education
(WASHINGTON DC) "The fact that ACT scores have remained
stagnant for the past five years is really troublesome. There is a clear
indication that the standards-based reform efforts, still in the implementation
phase in many school districts, have not yet impacted our most recent graduates
who did not benefit from a rigorous curriculum throughout their elementary and
secondary school years.
Post
your comments on this article
JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS FOUNDATION SCORES
TOUCHDOWN WITH PROGRAM AIMED AT LOW-INCOME YOUTH New Study Says Honor Rows Program Has Made a Difference For
Jacksonville--Area Youngsters
Princeton, NJ--A National Football League (NFL) team's foundation has developed
a project that motivates economically and socially disadvantaged
Jacksonville-area youth to improve behaviors and could be a national model for
other sports foundations, says an independent assessment. A report from the
Institute for Child Health Policy finds that the Jacksonville Jaguars
Foundation's Honor Rows Program supported school performance, inspired youth to
improve personal behaviors, and enhanced self-confidence among participants. It
also has elevated the Jaguars as a model corporate citizen that gives back to
its community.
Post
your comments on this article
Lexington Institute The Rise of Private Teacher Training By Robert Holland
Is a regular contributor to EducationNews
Executive Summary
A shortage of teachers and the growing demand of parents for choices in their
children’s education are combining to spur the entry of the private sector
into teacher training, which has largely been left to a state monopoly. Both
for-profit and nonprofit organizations are putting resources into teacher
preparation.
Post
your comments on this article
Tennessee Institute for Public Policy Going
Back to School: Improving Public School Food Service Operations
J. C. Bowman
Is a regular contributor to EducationNews
NASHVILLE --Local school districts should be able to look to state
government to provide research expertise, policy recommendations, and technical
assistance to help them channel more tax dollars away from non-academic purposes
and back into the classroom. If we are going to expect state agencies and
educational organizations to assist with improving academic performance, doesn’t
it make sense that non-academic functions receive similar assistance?
Post
your comments on this article
Education Policy Institute
AFT
Union Neglects Teachers A Weekly Column by Myron Lieberman
Inside AFT (the American Federation of Teachers on-line publication)
for the week ending July 30 illustrates several points about this occupational
conglomerate. The first item of six, trashes the Bush Administration's position
on a patients' rights bill. The next item describes an AFT organization victory
at Lawrence Memorial Hospital in New London, Connecticut. Union strategy
"featured one-on-one organizing at the work site, as well as house visits,
distribution of two organizing videos, targeted mailings of flyers and
newsletters, a special Web site linked from the state federations' web page, and
media outreach through local radio interviews and letters to the editor."
Post
your comments on this article
Parent Power Is
this math fuzzy? Paul Clopton
Fuzzy Math is one of the phrases used to refer to the many newer mathematics
programs that are designed around current fads in mathematics education and
often are inadequate for effective learning. The word fuzzy is used in the
sense of warm and fuzzy or fuzzy thinking, and does not refer to advanced topics
like fuzzy logic.
Post
your comments on this article
NCES
NCES has just released the report, "English
Literacy and Language
Minorities in the United States." This
report provides an in-depth look at
adult residents of the United States who were either born in other
countries or were born in the United States but spoke a language other
than English as young children. The report explores the English fluency
and literacy of this population, their fluency and literacy in their
native languages, and their employment patterns and earnings.
Educational Testing Service Model
Schools and Reading Networks – Education Reform That Works
Kurt M. Landgraf, President & CEO Educational Testing Service
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
The fundamental principles driving President Bush’s ambitious education reform
agenda are clear – all children deserve a chance to succeed, the federal
government should partner with states and schools to ensure success, and
intervention programs can make a difference. Post
your comments on this article
The Case for Federal Policy to
Raise Educational Standards
by Kevin R. Kosar
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
This article argues for federal policy to raise state educational standards. It
does this in five steps. First, it reviews the evidence on student educational
under-achievement. Second, it argues that under-achievement is worthy of a
policy response. Third, it shows that states have thus far failed to raise
standards. Fourth, it considers the evidence on standards reforms on improving
educational achievement. Finally, it outlines a federal policy to raise state
educational standards.
Post
your comments on this article
Washington Times Teaching
to the test
Denise Barnes
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Just imagine having to read a six-inch block of type, analyze it and then answer
the question in 1.8 minutes. It's the equivalent of trying to read a Reader's
Digest article in the grocery store line when the guy in front fo you is about
to get his change.
USA Today NEA
takes stand against tests
Anti-testing positions adopted by the National Education Association: *
The NEA supports legislation allowing parents to opt their children out of all
mandated standardized tests without penalty for students, parents, teachers or
schools.
UCLA SCHOOL MENTAL HEALTH PROJECT/CENTER FOR MENTAL HEALTH IN
SCHOOLS Teacher
Turnover: Dropout or Pushout? Are there mental health implications?
No one doubts there is a problem recruiting good teachers. It is
becoming evident that retaining teachers is an even bigger problem. Researchers
suggest that poor working conditions and lack of significant on-the-job training
and support are causing many new teachers to leave within five years. Included
in descriptions of poor working conditions are factors that, in motivational
terms, can be seen as threatening feelings of competence, self-determination,
and relatedness.
Post
your comments on this article
Town Hall The
war against competition hurts boys
by Marvin Olasky
At many schools, the classic competitions are dead. Dodge ball is out. Despite
the high profile of the National Spelling Bee, classroom spelling bees are much
less frequent. At some elementary school basketball games, no one keeps score.
It's
a mad, mad, world
by John Leo
More news from the annals of zero tolerance and the continuing campaign to make
the culture ever more deranged:
Publik
skool biggotz
by Michelle Malkin
Nothing breeds sophomoric resentment like academic success. So it's no surprise
that home schoolers and their children are the target of a spiteful T-shirt sold
in retail stores and online.
Center for the Study of Jobs & Education in
Wisconsin And the United States
The Phony Intellectualism of So-called School Reform in the United States Is
Harmful to Children and Public Education
By Dennis W. Redovich
Appearing Exclusively every Monday
Wisconsin State Supt. of Public Instruction Elizabeth Burmaster has received
some national news media attention for her comments that the Bush education
plan should be labeled "No Child Left Untested" rather than the
official Bush title of "No Child Left Behind". Where are the
priorities? “I think the federal plan takes us down the wrong road. The right
road, she said, is to emphasize steps such as reductions in class size,
improvement in early childhood educational programs and efforts to improve the
overall quality of teaching.” The school reform of Bush and the conservative
think tanks is phony intellectualism and elitism. Post
your comments on this article
The Tip of the Iceberg: SURR
Schools and Academic Failure in New York City
Introduction
Joseph P. Viteritti
Research Professor of Public Administration, New York University
Data Assembly
Kevin Kosar
Ph.D. Candidate in Politics, New York University
Since 1989 the New York State Education Department has been issuing a list of
low performing public schools that are targeted for corrective action. They
supposedly run the risk of being closed if significant improvements are not
made. Over the years nearly ninety percent of the schools placed on the
notorious SURR list (Schools Under Registration Review) have been located in New
York City, even though only twenty percent of the schools in the state are New
York City public schools. Presently 98 of 114 schools on the list are in the
five boroughs. Previous reports have shown that a disproportionate number of the
children assigned to these schools are African American or Hispanic. These
schools also have a disproportionate number of teachers who are not fully
certified and have less than five years of experience in the classroom. Post
your comments on this article
PediatricNeurology
Martin L. Kutscher, MD, Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics and
Neurology, New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY; Pediatric Neurological
Assoc., White Plains, NY. We’ve
Been Missing the Point “Johnny is very active!He never stops moving.He
gets distracted by any little noise, and has the attention span of a flea.
Often, he acts before he thinks. His sister, Jill, is often in a fog.Sometimes, she’s just so spaced!”
That is how we typically consider children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder (ADHD). OK, not so bad. But that is often only the tip of
the iceberg. Here is another likely description of the whole picture for a child
with ADHD: Post
your comments on this article
Here are some interesting conclusions taken from the results of
the most
recent (2000) NAEP scores in mathematics. 1. Calculator use "At grade 4 more frequent calculator use was associated with
lower scores, while at grades 8 and 12 the opposite was generally true--students who said
they used calculators more often tended to score higher than their peers
who reported using calculators less frequently." 2. Computer availability There was no meaningful correlation apparent between computer availability and math performance in any grade. See Chapter 5, p. 147 3. Textbooks At all grades, students who reported doing problems from a textbook
regularly scored higher than those who did not. In grades 8 and 12,
"those who reported doing math problems from a textbook daily scored highest."
(The average score was 281 for those answering "daily" versus 265 for
those answering "weekly.") See Chapter 6, p. 157, 158 4. Cooperative learning At all grades, students who reported talking with other students during
class about how to solve problems "every day" or "weekly"
scored lower than those who reported doing it "MONTHLY." "Monthly" also scored
higher than "hardly ever." Post
your comments on this article
New South Wales Department of Education and
Training SUBMISSION
TO HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES INQUIRY INTO THE EDUCATION OF BOYS The NSW Department of Education and Training welcomes this
parliamentary inquiry into the education of boys. It is appropriate and timely
for the Commonwealth to take a leadership role in this issue of national
significance. The focus of the inquiry on the social, cultural and educational
factors affecting the education of boys signifies the complexity of the issues
facing schools and other educational institutions with regard to gender.
Review of
Teacher in NSW and the Report "Quality Matters" The review of teacher education in NSW provides an opportunity for
teachers and the community to help create the conditions for improving the
professional standing and quality of teaching in our schools and colleges.
National Education Association NEW REPORT
URGES POLICYMAKERS TO ADDRESS NEEDS OF RURAL SCHOOLS
"Why Rural Matters: The Need for Every State to Take Action on Rural
Education" offers a state-by-state look at the education needs of our
country's rural communities. NEA recently sponsored a congressional briefing on
this report. See for yourself why it's so important.
Post
your comments on this article
Children First America THE
COMING DEMOCRATIC EMBRACE OF PARENTAL CHOICE. A report from the Federal
Election Commission reveals the depth of teacher union political activity
and power. The report reveals that the National Education Association
essentially purchased not only seats on Democratic campaign committees in 1996 but also the right to approve or reject the Democratic agenda. However,
Democrats have played leading rolls supporting school choice in Milwaukee, Cleveland and elsewhere.
Post
your comments on this article
ABC News
Looking for an Answer
Home Schooling Offers Alternative, Challenge for Parents and KidsBy Dean Schabner
Aug. 10 — Five youngsters are drowned by their mother in their bathtub. Three
teenagers are killed in a murder-suicide. A 14-year-old runner-up from a
previous year wins a national spelling bee. A Web search for "home
schooling" would have turned up all of these stories.
Wichita Eagle
OUR VIEW
Problems
at schools deserve hard look Over the past six years, the deal the for-profit Edison Project made
with the Wichita school district has been: Give the corporation some schools,
let it apply good management and know-how, add a mix of public and private
funding, and they'd show us just how much more effective education can be.
Post
your comments on this article
White House Summit on Early Childhood
Cognitive Development U.S.
Secretary of Education Rod Paige
Thank you, Mrs. Cheney, for that kind introduction. It is an honor to be a part
of an administration that has so many strong advocates for education, and of
those advocates, you are one of the most eloquent. I know you have been working
on a book for the past few months, and I hear you are nearly finished. Like many
people, I am eager to read your book, and also eager to have you working
alongside us for America's children fulltime.
Address
by Susan B. Neuman Assistant Secretary for Elementary and
Secondary Education
U.S. Department of Education
"Access to Print: Problem, Consequences and Instructional Solutions"
Mrs. Bush, thank you for the opportunity to speak at this important conference.
Today, I want to take the opportunity to discuss some of my work in early
literacy over the past ten years in Philadelphia at Temple University, and then
at the University of Michigan.
Center for the Study of Jobs
& Education in Wisconsin And the United States The
Corporate Conquest Of The University By Robert Miranda
Is a regular contributor to EducationNews
The debate over stem-cell research is missing the obvious deformity
caused by university/corporate partnerships. While we are inundated with the
moral and ethical aspects of the debate, a more profound and fundamental issue
for us to contemplate continues to be ignored. Post
your comments on this article
Education Week Mentoring
Can't Do It All
Author and educator Harry K. Wong says that new teachers need systematic
and sustained induction programs, not just mentors.
Plano Parental Rights Council Media Bias in reporting Educational Progress
By Susan Sarhady
President, Plano Parental Rights Council
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
Mathematics achievement has been in the news lately because of the recent
release of the results of the 2000 National Mathematics Assessment. Results are
reported on a state level as well as a national level. The assessment is
administered to a sampling of 4th, 8th and 12th grade students. Here is the
short list of some of the headlines the report generated: Post
your comments on this article
Section 504 Compliance Advisor Homeschool
placement can trigger a special education obligation Copyright 2001 LRP Publications
Section 504 Compliance Advisor...08/02/2001 By Perry Zirkel*
When homeschooled children have one or more disabilities, it raises issues about
the intersection of homeschooling under state law and special education under
the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. This Q&A discusses that
issue using published court and administrative rulings.
Q: Is homeschooling under state law the same as homebound placement under the
IDEA?
Insight Magazine What
Happened to the Great Ideas? By John Berlau jberlau@InsightMag.com Philosopher Mortimer J. Adler recently passed away, but his legacy lives on
in the Great Books programs he inspired and succeeded in establishing across the
nation.
Hyper-Drugging
of Active Kids By Kelly Patricia O’Meara komeara@InsightMag.com State legislatures are beginning to take action to rein in the widespread
practice of drugging hyperactive children to control their undesirable behavior
in the classroom.
Students
Confront Campus News Bias By Erik Baptist
Despite the general lack of support from the liberal university establishment,
conservative college newspapers nationwide continue to spark intellectual debate
and challenge the left.
Schooled
for Life By Stephen Goode sgoode@InsightMag.com Christendom College is one of 30 distinguished colleges/universities which, Insight
has found, still teach the fullness of the Western academic traditions.
Schools
Giving P.E. Short Shrift By Timothy W. Maier tmaier@InsightMag.com Schools across the country are decreasing class time, money and resources
devoted to physical education, which critics claim is harming the health of U.S.
children.
A
Lesson Learned the Hard Way By Sheila R. Cherry scherry@InsightMag.com After Washington public schools promised reforms, a mother and son found out
firsthand that some teachers would sacrifice students’ futures to save their
own jobs.
The Public Interest The Surprising Consensus On
School Choice
By Jay P. Greene
There has been a flurry of activity in school choice research in the last few
years. As a result, where we used to have only theories and limited evidence we
now have a relatively solid understanding of the likely effects of school
choice. I say "relatively" because all research is necessarily
imperfect and additional study can always improve the confidence with which we
draw conclusions. But the research on school choice includes several
random-assignment studies, the "gold-standard" of research design,
where subjects are randomly assigned to treatment and control groups as in a
medical study. I can think of only one other education policy issue (the effect
of class-size reduction) that has been the subject of even one significant
random-assignment experiment, let alone several "gold-standard"
studies. Post
your comments on this article
PTO Today PTO
Power
Entire town in on the act for this group's special
reading night.
Celebrity Night Coaxes Kids to Read
Pew Internet & American Life Project The
Internet and Education:pdf Findings of the Pew Internet & American Life Project
A Back-To-School Message from Michigan's Superintendent The
Opening of School Still Brings Mixed Emotions
Tom Watkins
Is a regular contributor to EducationNews
The anticipation, fear, exhilaration and excitement, all were building up in me
like a kettle about to blow.
I remember the feeling well. The push and pull that "the day" was
quickly approaching choked me like a size 15 shirt around my size 16 neck. I
wanted the day to get here, and yet I feared it would arrive - kind of like Mom
saying "your Dad wants to see you, young man, NOW!" Post
your comments on this article
The Women's Quartley The Write Stuff:
Christina Hoff Sommers believes schools should teach the lost art of
penmanship
There are exceptions, but here is the rule: Boys are graphologically challenged.
That males have many more problems with penmanship than females is "not
even a question," according to University of Maryland special education
professor and distinguished scholar Steve Graham. "It is one of the better
established facts in the literature." Handwriting is a basic skill that
serves us all our lives. Unfortunately, a problem that primarily affects boys is
rarely on anyone's list of educational priorities. This one could be solved
readily enough, if schools would take the pains they once took to inculcate good
handwriting.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute An
Undergraduate Education Challenge The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has issued a challenge to
science professors across the United States: Show the same ingenuity in your
undergraduate teaching that you do in your scientific research.
While You Weren’t Watching
By Bill Carlson
Is a regular contributor to EducationNews
Delaine Eastin, California’s State Superintendent of
Public Instruction, wants to ensure all children the right to a safe and
respectful learning environment and the opportunity to develop into healthy,
productive adults. Most schools in America have long held these goals as a top
priority. Even so, during April, 2001, Eastin sent a directive to all
California county and local school district superintendents advising them that
Assembly Bill (AB) 537, the California Student Safety and Violence
Prevention Act of 2000 (approved by outgoing Governor Pete Wilson on
October 2, 1999), has brought revisions to the Education Code.
Post
your comments on this article
The National Association for Neighborhood Schools has
sent the following letter to Ralph Boyd regarding his position on the Baton
Rouge situation as detailed in the above article.
Ralph F. Boyd, Jr. Assistant Attorney General Civil Rights Division
U.S. Justice Department
950 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Dear Mr. Boyd We are in receipt of a copy of your correspondence to Lucian A.
Mascarella of East Baton Rouge LA. While Mr. Mascarella did not seek our
response to the letter he shared with us, as a national organization we are
obligated to respond on behalf not only of the citizens of Baton Rouge, but of
the entire nation.
Post
your comments on this article
GOALS 2000 U.S.
RESTRUCTURING SOCIETY THROUGH EDUCATION The U.S. Department of Education is sponsoring two very significant
conferences during November and December 1997. They involve President Clinton's
pledge to make education his number one priority for the next four years. All
educators have a crucial role to play and the public has a compelling interest
in understanding the plan, entitled Goals 2000. This is the program which the
President has made his number one priority.
Post
your comments on this article
ISTE RESEARCH JOURNAL MARKS TRANSITION WITH
FREE ONLINE ISSUE Free Online Issue of JRTE
(31 August 2001)
A free issue of the Journal for Research on Technology in Education (JRTE) is
now available online at www.iste.org/jrte!
The JRTE Summer 2001 issue marks the journal’s name change from the Journal of
Research on Computing in Education (JRCE).
National Education Association NEA MEMBERS
PROFILED IN PBS DOCUMENTARY
Don't miss "The First Year" Thursday, September 6 at 9:00 p.m. The
90-minute film shows the determination and commitment of five new teachers
struggling to survive their first year in America's toughest schools.
Children First America BISHOP
LEADS FLOCK OUT OF ST. LOUIS SCHOOLS Fed up with decades of St. Louis public school failure, Bishop
Lawrence Wooten of the Church of God in Christ (the second largest and fastest
growing African-American church in the country) has begun the process of setting
up new private schools with the goal of getting 3,000 children out of the
dysfunctional government run system. The Bishop had been attempting to set up
charter schools for years, but had run into a "Berlin Wall" of
resistance from district authorities. Wooten
told the Wall Street Journal that only 42% of students entering St. Louis
government schools finish despite spending $10,000 per pupil. St. Louis has been
spending at County Club rates without achieving Mickey Mouse Club results.
"We wanted to open charter schools, but to save our kids we are going to do
it all by ourselves," Tim Daniels, Wooten’s former marine point-man, told
the Journal. The focus of the new schools will be on academics and parental
involvement. The Bishop’s move is a dramatic sign of the extreme frustration
felt by those left behind in urban school systems. I doubt that it will be the
last...
Center for Immigration Studies "American
Unionism and U.S. Immigration Policy,"
by Vernon M. Briggs, Jr.
Throughout its lengthy history, few issues have caused the American labor
movement more
agony than immigration. It is ironic this should be the case as most adult
immigrants directly enter the labor force. So eventually do most of their family
members. But precisely because immigration affects the scale, geographical
distribution, and skill composition of the labor force, it affects national,
regional, and local labor market conditions. Hence, organized labor can never
ignore immigration trends. Immigration has in the past and continues to affect
the developmental course of American trade unionism. Labor’s responses, in
turn, have significantly influenced the actual public policies that have shaped
the size and character of immigrant entries.
WorldNet Daily
(2 articles)
(2 articles)
Salvation
for government schools? What would you say if I told you there is a
movement under way, endorsed by groups as diverse as People for the American Way
and the Christian Legal Society, to bring the Bible back into government
schools?
The debate is engaged! Exclusive:
Elizabeth Farah dialogues with reader on home schooling
The following is the correspondence exchanged between a reader and myself
regarding my
last column.
MY COLUMN: Government can't educate without destroying the very object of
education: the search for truth. Either government employees dictate
"truth" to the formative youth or the government employee insists that
objective truth does not exist. Either alternative is ludicrous and unthinkable
to the rational mind.
Washington Times Schools,
not government, should select textbooks
I read with great interest the Aug. 8 story "School standards boost test
success." As a publisher, I have a suggestion that I feel will further
improve test scores: deregulate the state textbook selection process. Presently,
twenty-one states have state-level textbook selection processes.
RecordonLine Bowen
quits SUNY New Paltz, will head museum NEW PALTZ: Within the faculty and the community, many people believe
the SUNY board and chancellor forced Bowen's resignation.
SUNY New Paltz President Roger Bowen resigned yesterday, leaving behind what he
deemed a "great job in an ideal place," and ending an embattled
five-year reign at this liberal college.
TIMSS videotapes Professor
Alan Siegel has looked anew at the TIMSS videotapes.
In Japan, Siegel finds teacher-guided instruction (including a wide
variety of hints and helps from teachers while students are working on or
presenting solutions). In both Japanese algebra and geometry classes, he points
out that the tapes contain no evidence of students inventing or discovering new
mathematical principles or solution methods. The students do gain a deep
understanding of mathematical concepts. Japanese lessons do not include a
significant amount of group work before students have worked on their own. The
Japanese math teachers use an interactive teaching approach of "grappling
and telling," together with subtle reinforcement techniques. Japanese
lessons make extensive use of proof-based reasoning. Japanese instruction uses
more lecturing and demonstrations than do traditionalist American math teachers.
Siegel also finds that coding guidelines devised by nonmathematicians have
distorted some aspects of previous studies of the videotapes.
Post
your comments on this article
Rocklin
parent challenges legality and propriety of Rocklin High School site council
election: Improper
ballot distribution charged; improper candidacy challenged ROCKLIN, California
(27 August 2001):A Rocklin parent
is challenging the legality of the recent Rocklin High School Site Council
election, charging the school district with improper ballot distribution and
untimely ballot counting.He is
also challenging the legality and propriety of a district substitute teacher’s
election to a parent position on the council.
Post
your comments on this article
Gadfly Taking
aim at AIMS Diane Ravtch
My older sister lived in Scottsdale, Arizona, for many years and her six
children attended the public schools there. Her oldest child, my niece, took
most of her public schooling in Texas and is now a teacher in Florida. The rest
are graduates of the Arizona school system. Whenever I visited her, which I
especially liked to do in the winter, I always talked to my nieces and nephews
about what they were doing in school. My most memorable exchange was about a
dozen years ago, with my nephew Steve.
Post
your comments on this article
NCES The NCES publication "Homeschooling
in the United States: 1999" is
now available in a web-enabled format. In the spring of 1999, an
estimated 850,000 students nationwide were being homeschooled. This
report, based on data from the Parent Survey of the National Household
Education Survey Program, 1999, contains information about the
characteristics of homeschooled children and their families, parent's
reasons for homeschooling, and public school support for homeschoolers.
Lexington Institute SOL
results pinpoint problems Use Virginia's universities to rescue failing schools
By ROBERT HOLLAND
AS VIRGINIA public schools prepare to start a new year, there's good news and
bad news about their ability to meet the state-prescribed Standards of Learning.
Washington Times Foes
cite 'Dirty Dozen´ of collegiate PC By Andrea Billups
College students this fall can enroll in a buffet of courses that tout
"Marx, multiculturalism and malarkey," a conservative education
organization says in its annual "Dirty Dozen" list of politically
correct classes.
Oklahoman Oklahoma
City 'Online' - Schools Should Advance Academics THIS editorial page has, in the past year, often endorsed the
progressive
concept of distance learning for elementary and secondary education. Advanced
Academics, a business based in Oklahoma City, is among the leading firms
involved with this exciting new area in provision of educational services.
Post
your comments on this article
Women's Quarterly (Independent Women's Forum)
Summer 2001 "The
Write Stuff" by Christina Hoff Sommers
Christina Hoff Sommers believes schools should teach the lost art of penmanship
There are exceptions, but here is the rule Boys are graphologically challenged.
That males have many more problems with penmanship than females is "not
even a question," according to University of Maryland special education
professor and distinguished scholar Steve Graham. "It is one of the better
established facts in the literature." Handwriting is a basic skill that
serves us all our lives. Unfortunately, a problem that primarily affects boys is
rarely on anyone's list of educational priorities. This one could be solved
readily enough, if schools would take the pains they once took to inculcate good
handwriting.
Post
your comments on this article
OSEP held a National Summit on Learning Disabilities August 26 and 27th in
Washington DC. CSPAN2 is running the opening session with addresses from
the Secretary of Education, the new Ast. Secretary of OSERS and Lou Danielson.
Many special education faces are in the audience.
The executive Summaries of the papers presented can be downloaded from www.air.org/LDsummit
or through www.ed.gov/offices/OSERS/OSEP.
By Friday afternoon webcast of the presentations will be available through the
sites above. Full text of the papers will be available in early fall.
EDUCATION - HAVE IT YOUR WAY? A
Response to Time Magazine's "Home Sweet School" 8/27 cover story,
by Roxanne Sitler We've all heard the slogan, Have it your way. Most Americans have no trouble
understanding this concept when it comes to having their meal their way. But
when it comes to education, we run headlong into a different mindset.
"What? Have education your way? No way," they say. "The
traditional, statist-style 'Whopper' of education might disappear from the menu!
That just won't do. After all, it's delicious, nutritious and produces happy,
healthy, well-adjusted citizens - 'good' citizens. It's one big, happy hamburger
that's been concocted in the kitchen of government education and society would
starve to death if we had it any other way."
Post
your comments on this article
Let's
Start a Revolution in Public Education Tom Watkins Michigan's Superintendent of Public Instruction
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
As I begin this journey as Michigan's Superintendent of Public Instruction, I
ponder Is the glass half full or half empty with regard to the quality of our
public schools? Being an eternal optimist, I quickly conclude that the glass is
half full. Yet, we have a long way to go to fill it to the top.
Post
your comments on this article
Edison
Faces More Political Than Performance Challenges By Philip Vassallo, Ed.D.
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
Imagine having a child whom you are about to place in your district’s school,
which has a history of low student performance. You do this because of the
district’s promise that a new administration has contractually agreed to
improve student performance. This is what is happening all over the country:
parents place their children in educationally precarious situations in the hope
that the schools will improve.
Post
your comments on this article
Reason Magazine Teaching
the Bottom Line
First came for-profit schools for kids. Are for-profit colleges for
teachers next?
Sam MacDonald
Contra Costa Times (California)
2nd look at college fund cuts
Contra Costa district applauds Davis' tentative plans to restore money
SACRAMENTO - After hearing protests from community college officials and both
Republican and Democratic lawmakers, Gov. Gray Davis has reversed course to
consider restoring $98 million that he cut from community college budgets one
month ago.
The National Center for Alternative Certification Information The Mall is Quiet; School is Open. Now who is
Minding the Kids? Shortage Update
Almost everyone has heard about the shortage – that entropic mix of
increased student enrollments, reduced student-to-teacher ratios, an aging
teacher workforce, lack of support for novices and new-to-district teachers, low
salaries, and relatively low unemployment. Sources estimate that 2.4 million
teachers will be needed by 2012 (www.nea.org).
The most severe shortages effect the neediest students bilingual, urban and
rural, special education, and technology teachers are urgently needed. Over 73%
of urban schools have immediate needs for bilingual and
English-as-a-second-language (ESL) instructors (www.recruitingteacher.com).
Recruiting teachers for children of color remains an urgent challenge. Forty-two
percent of all public schools in the US have no minority teachers while minority
students make up 33% of total student body enrollment. To date, minority
teachers comprise just 13.5% of the total teacher population.
Post
your comments on this article
Big Brother is coming to your local school "Idea
for an Investigative Reporter" by Donna Garner
Is a regular contributor to EducationNews
Here is an idea for a good investigative reporter Since Texas' public school
accountability system seems to be the model that is being adopted as the
"standard" for other states to use, why doesn't someone do an in-depth
study of the PEIMS (Public Education Information Management System) which the
Texas Education Agency has developed and utilized for many years? I have heard
that over 250 pieces of information on every educator and every public school
child are carried on this database; but to my knowledge, nobody has ever done an
in-depth article on the subject. I know that most school districts have
full-time PEIMS data entry clerks; therefore, there are many people who could be
interviewed regarding the system.
Post
your comments on this article
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATIONAppropriate
Use of High-Stakes Testing in Our Nation's Schools How Should Student Learning and Achievement Be Measured?
Measuring what and how well students learn is an important building block in the
process of strengthening and improving our nation's schools. Tests, along with
student grades and teacher evaluations, can provide critical measures of
students' skills, knowledge, and abilities. Therefore, tests should be part of a
system in which broad and equitable access to educational opportunity and
advancement is provided to all students. Tests, when used properly, are among
the most sound and objective ways to measure student performance. But, when test
results are used inappropriately or as a single measure of performance, they can
have unintended adverse consequences.
Post
your comments on this article
Association of American Educators Empowering
Teachers to Do Assessment By Linda Plattner
Our dependence on high-stakes testing, particularly at the state level,
continues to grow ("Quality Counts 2001," January 11, 2001, Education
Week). As we begin to feel the impact of high-stakes testing—defined as
testing that includes some subset or combination of rewards and punishment for
students and educators—it has moved to the front pages of newspapers across
the country.
The
Ultimate Stress By Ruth E. Sternberg Five superintendent's stories of coping with the most severe circumstances
on the job. Also: Advice
from experts. Ruth Sternberg is an education reporter for The Columbus
Dispatch in Columbus, Ohio.
When Pigs
Fly and Cats Bark
By Peggy Hinckley It's not improbable, says one veteran superintendent. You can take control
of your life by managing stress. Also: Additional
resources. Peggy Hinckley is superintendent of the Metropolitan School
District of Warren Township, Indianapolis, Ind.
The Care and
Feeding of the Superintendent
By James F. Burgett
A self-proclaimed wellness authority from the school leadership ranks
advises colleagues how to stay alive long enough to draw retirement. Jim
Burgett is superintendent in Highland, Ill.
Physical
Fitness for Busy Bodies
By John Gratto
A superintendent's strategy for getting fit in less time than you might
think. John Gratto is superintendent of the Britonkill Central Schools, Troy,
N.Y.
More Than a
Mascot
By Paul Riede
School system leaders are being drawn into emotional debates over
proposals to replace long-held Indian names and logos as school mascots. Also:
A
Colorado principal's quest to find meaning behind the mascot. Paul Riede
is an education writer with The Syracuse Post-Standard in Syracuse,
N.Y.
Leadership in
the Want Ads By Irving H. Buchen The job postings can tell you a lot about the new realities of the
superintendency. Irving Buchen is a professor of management and communication
in the distance education doctoral program of Walden University, Fort Myers,
Fla.
Center for the Study of Jobs and Education In
Wisconsin and U.S. An
Education Sham in Wisconsin and the U.S.: Higher Education for All By Dennis W. Redovich What is the rationale for
requiring all high school students to complete the requirements for entrance
into a four college in order to graduate from high school? The fact that many,
if not the majority, of the most extreme public proponents of this idiocy are
four year college graduates makes me question the prudence of too many
university graduates, professors and administrators. And an academically
disadvantaged media dutifully reports all the hype and nonsense about the
critical importance of “all” being prepared to attend a four-year college
without any serious challenge or rebuttal.
Post
your comments on this article
Achieve Statement
of Achieve President Robert Schwartz on 2000 NAEP Math Results
WASHINGTON -- The latest NAEP results in math are
evidence that expecting more from students and measuring schools' performance
can be important levers to raise student achievement. While we have a long way
to go, the push to raise standards over the last decade has led to a doubling in
the percentage of 4th- and 8th graders proficient in math.
American Federation of
Teachers Statement
of Sandra Feldman,
President of the American Federation of Teachers,
on the Phi Delta Kappa Poll of the Public’s Attitudes
Toward the Public Schools
The Phi Delta Kappa poll showing an all-time high public approval rating for the
public schools should take the wind out of the sails of opponents of public
schools. Anytime you have seven out of ten people in favor of working with the
existing public school system to make it even stronger and almost nine out of
ten people saying that we must raise teacher salaries in order to address the
critical teacher shortage, you don’t just have support, you have a mandate to
keep pushing for the things that we know work in our public schools.
Elementary Educators Rewards and
Prizes: Should you use them?
Some teachers love them, while others avoid them. What do you think about
using material rewards in the classroom? See what worked for one third grade
teacher.
Journal American Medical Association Pay
Attention: Ritalin Acts Much Like Cocaine Brian Vastag
Washington Advanced imaging research has answered a 40-year-old
question about methylphenidate (Ritalin), which is taken daily by 4 million to 6
million children in the United States: how does it work? The answer may unsettle
many parents, because the drug acts much like cocaine, albeit cocaine dripped
through molasses (J Neurosci. 2001;21:RC121).
Post
your comments on this article
Cause on Line Michigan
Board of Ed Out to Gut Special Ed Parent's Power Editorial pertaining to the Proposed
Revised Administrative Rules for Special Education
COMMENTARY By Kim Murphy for the FEAT DAILY NEWSLETTER
Currently, the Michigan Department of Education is in the process of aligning
their state administrative rules for special education with the federal
regulations, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Within this
process, the Department of Education is rescinding the majority of rules that
have been relied upon to regulate special education services offered in
Michigan. This process will shift the burden of enforcing special
education laws from the state level down to the Individual Education Plan
process where many parents are left helpless. There is a tremendous lack
of enforcement here in Michigan, as there is in many states around the U.S.
Parents and organizations alike are horrified that these changes are taking
place and that our input is being given little credence. We are organizing
and we are gaining strength to fight these changes and to hold on to the
regulations that we feel are invaluable in securing appropriate services for our
children.
Post
your comments on this article
Town Hall Summertime
-- and the livin' ain't easy by Bill O'Reilly
As summer winds down, America finds itself in a rather dubious place. The
economy is terrible, the public-school system isn't much better, and Gary Condit
is a household name.
Children First American DESTINATION:
BANGOR MAINE It was a great pleasure for me to travel to Maine this week to
present a challenge grant to the Maine Children’s Scholarship Fund for its
successful local fund-raising efforts.
Washington Monthly Leave No
Superintendent Behind: On July 12, The Washington Monthly and the Annenberg Public Policy
Center hosted a panel discussion showcasing some leading urban superintendents
and their concerns about current proposals for education reform. Participants
included: Roy Romer, Superintendent of the Los Angeles City Schools, Harold
Levy, Chancellor of New York City Schools, David Hornbeck, former Superintendent of Schools in Philadelphia,
Gene Hickok, Undersecretary of Education
Post
your comments on this article
USA Today Arizona
school-choice plan provides model By Carrie Lips
Tinika Malone is a 31-year-old single mother with four beautiful daughters.
Unbeknown to her, she's also on the front lines of a national debate over the
future of public education.
Cato Institute Arizona's
Scholarship Tax Credit:A New Direction for School Choice?
POLICY FORUM
Monday, September 17, 2001
Featuring Sen. Jon L. Kyl (R-Ariz.), Introduced the Leave No Child Behind Tax
Credit Act of 2001; Lisa Graham Keegan, Chief executive officer of the Education
Leaders Council and former Arizona superintendent of public instruction; Carrie
Lips, Author of "The Arizona Scholarship Tax Credit: Giving Parents
Choices, Saving Taxpayers Money," to be released on September 17 by the
Cato Institute.
Salon Uncurious
George
There's a lot to be learned from the president's encounters with elementary
school students
by Arianna Huffington
Gather 'round, little ones, it's story time. Today's is a scary one. It's about
a president utterly lacking in imagination. It's called "The Very Uncurious
President."
WorldNet Daily The
education tax racket LewRockwell.com So there's this guy named Ray Simon. He's director of the Arkansas
Department of Education, and he's got a complaint about the boom in home
schooling. The way he sees it, this trend is a threat to our, or at least his,
way of life.
Reason Magazine Teaching
the Bottom Line First came for-profit schools for kids. Are for-profit colleges for
teachers next?
By Sam MacDonald
When the Edison Project began as a
controversial for-profit school venture in 1992, the first thing it had to do
was find some students. Those were the good old days. Now that Edison is
teaching the three R’s to 57,000 students in 113 schools across the country,
it faces a tougher challenge: finding enough qualified teachers. The same is
true for public schools, of course. But Edison thinks it has found a solution
that might allow it to leap-frog its public education counterparts in the quest
for instructors: The company is planning to open its own system of one-year
teachers colleges.
Post
your comments on this article
Hoover Institute What
do tests tell us? by Bill Evers
"One thing standardized tests can tell us is whether the grades that
teachers give their students actually indicate how much the students know."
Post
your comments on this article
Fordham Foundation (2 articles) Personnel
Policy in Charter Schools
When schools are held accountable for results and freed from red tape
governing personnel decisions, they take advantage of their freedom by adopting
innovative strategies for hiring and rewarding teachers, according to this new
report by economists Michael Podgursky and Dale Ballou. This study is based on a
survey administered to a random sample of 132 public charter schools that have
been operating for at least three years.
How
Necessary is Ed School? Chester E. Finn, Jr.
A fundamental issue and long-running debate in U.S. teacher policy—with
profound implications for both the supply and the quality of our K-12
instructional force—is whether all public-school teachers must be
"certified" by their states and, if so, whether they must spend a
prolonged period of time in an "approved teacher preparation program"
on a university campus before they can qualify for certification. Simply put,
must people attend an ed school before they are permitted to teach?
Maple River Education Coalition The
NAEP Test (NAEP = National Assessment of Educational Progress)
The NAEP test is commonly described as a national academic achievement test. It
is actually far more, and far different, than that. It is a key tool for forcing
the federal mandated value-system and political indoctrination into schools,
under the guise of "measuring educational progress."
Post
your comments on this article
Quick Observations Year
2000 NAEP Math Assessment Richard Innes
California’s drop in 4th grade exclusion, combined with the state’s 5
point score increase, may be one of the biggest improvements in this assessment
series. It is notable that the same situation did not occur for California 8th
grade math.
Post
your comments on this article
Columbus Dispatch SCHOOLS
SHOULD 'DECOMMIT' TO GOBBLEDYGOOK
By William L. Bainbridge
There's a story that circulated for years among educators about the parent of a
high-school student in Texas who received a notice from the school
administration announcing a meeting for a new program.
Post
your comments on this article
Science Education Paradox
How Can The Same System Produce Scientific Elites And Illiterates?
The United States by any conceivable measure has the finest scientists in the
world. But the rest of the population, by any rational standard, is abysmally
ignorant of science, mathematics and all things technical. That is the paradox
of scientific elites and scientific illiterates: how can the same system of
education that produced all those brilliant scientists also have produced all
that ignorance?
Post
your comments on this article
Fox News Do
Costs of Sex Harassment Cases Affect College Tuition? Hundreds of thousands of parents are tightening their belts to write
out huge college tuition checks. Others are taking money out of every paycheck
for their younger children's education.
America's Survival $15
Billion Missing From Education Department The report, "Government at the Brink," issued in
June by the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, says that the Education
Department reported in its financial statements that it had $7.5 billion in the
bank when it actually owed that money to the U.S. Treasury. This means that
the department's books are off by $15 billion, about a third of what it
spends annually. But this isn't just a case of bad accounting. Education
department whistleblower John Gard suspects that "senior management
officials" in the department had been "setting up the Agency to rip it
off" and that millions of dollars or more have been embezzled. Gard says
there was no security over the system to prevent embezzlement and no audit trail
to find out where the money was going.
Post
your comments on this article
Buckeye Institute (2 articles) Bargaining
Away Teachers' Rights pdf Imagine you are a public school teacher in Ohio
who is generally satisfied with the representation that your union provides, but
don't like your dues going to support political issues that you oppose.
Your options for relief may appear limited until you discover that Ohio law
allows you to resign from the union and only pay dues for collective
bargaining representation. Teacher unions in Ohio have become wise to this and
made it increasingly
difficult for teachers to exercise this right.
Post
your comments on this article
Policy Note Let's
Try That Again: Remedial Education in Ohio's Universities.
Post-secondary remedial education is slowly on the rise in Ohio. During
the 1998-99 school year, 26 percent of Ohio's recent high school graduates
enrolled in math courses classified as "remedial" at Ohio's public
universities. This represents a three percentage point increase over the
1978-79 school year, the first for which historical data is available.
Post
your comments on this article
Howard Hughes Medical Institute "Overcoming
the Intractable Problem" For many years, colleges and universities
across the United States have sought to increase the numbers of African
American, Hispanic and Native American students who pursue scientific careers.
Yet the College Board reported in 1999 that underrepresentation of minority
students had become even "more intractable."*
National Center for Learning Disabilities (2
articles) New
Reading Guide for Teachers Teaching Reading: A Guide for First Grade is a
new, FREE, 32-page,
two-color guide for educators from the award-winning children's TV show
BETWEEN THE LIONS. The show, which airs daily on PBS, uses music, humor,
puppets, and live action to help teach reading to children ages four to
seven. It features a family of lions-Theo, Cleo, Lionel, and Leona-who run
a library like no other: stories come alive, vowels sing, and knights such
as Sir H and Sir Op joust together to form Hop!
Legislative
News The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have each passed a bill
that
would reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA),
revamping the nation's largest federal involvement in education. During
the coming weeks, Senate and House conferees will meet to work out the
final provisions. Issues related to learning disabilities include funding
for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), discipline of
children with disabilities, and improving reading.
In Defense of Testing Series Educational Testing Service Testing,
Accountability, and Funding Key to Education Reform Kurt M. Landgraf, President & CEO
Educational Testing Service
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
A quick glance at headlines from our nation’s newspapers would have you
believe that Americans are sick and tired of standardized tests in schools.
There are protests by parents and taunts from test takers in front of schools
and state houses. And yet, a far-reaching national public opinion poll says
quite the opposite. An overwhelming majority of Americans are in fact demanding
greater accountability for our public education system—measurement that can be
pro-vided through the proper use of fair assessments.
Post
your comments on this article
Select California Schools made higher gains THREE
YEARS OF PROGRESS IN COMMITTED DISTRICTS AND SCHOOLS
Wayne Bishop
Three districts that I know about, as well as a number of individual schools,
have made a strong effort to get with the California Mathematics Content
Standards. These districts are Azusa and Inglewood, pretty small, and Sacramento
City, pretty large. I started this last year with two years and now there is
another year of data. As last year, the year 2001 math numbers, SAT-9 average
national percentile ranking (NPR), exceed their other SAT-9 scores for all of
2-6 and a 10-15 point spread is common, some as much as 20. Azusa's mathematics
performance made the LA Times, Richard Lee Colvin's special insert "Report
Card" of August 16, "two -thirds of the students are from low-income
households and half are not native English speakers.
Post
your comments on this article
The Guardian (UK) Tested
to destruction
Most of the 600,000 teenagers anxiously awaiting their results on Thursday will
be hoping fervently never to have anything to do with GCSEs ever again.
Exam burden may drop
Houston Review Longhorn
Overpopulation Beth Henary documents how the top ten percent rule has flooded the
University of Texas at Austin and lowered admissions standards.
National Bureau of Economic Research School
Style Can Raise Achievement "Elementary school students with teachers who are 'tough'
graders have fewer disciplinary problems and show greater improvements in their
reading and math scores."
Though state curricular standards have proliferated since 1983, there remains a
stunning lack of consensus about what comprises a good education, an inability
to agree on how one measures it, and a lack of evidence about whether particular
teaching practices or school organizational forms do a superior job of imparting
it. In Do High Grading Standards Affect Student Performance? (NBER
Working Paper No. 7985), authors David Figlio and Maurice Lucas
explore one of these questions.
Post
your comments on this article
The American Enterprise The
Tragedy of School Consolidation By Bill Kauffman
As the school bells ring in another fall, let us recall those benighted days
before the 2,000-student high school, with its Olympic-sized swimming pool,
gleaming array of computers, and anonymous enrollees falling through gilded
cracks.
Center for the Study of Jobs and Education In
Wisconsin and U.S. The
Big Con in Education in Texas and the United States By Dennis W. Redovich
Appearing Exclusively every Monday
The
use of schools and workers as scapegoats for our nations social and economic
problems is a big con. Schools have been bashed by politicians, the business
interests and learned elite forever. Bashing schools is a worldwide phenomenon
and is not confined to Texas. Texas just likes to do things big time. The
con has been conceived by too many people, including educators and public
officials feeding at the trough and is gleefully perpetuated without question by
an academically challenged media.
Post
your comments on this article
KeepTextbooks House
Bill 759 would let children keep their math and science textbooks
Mark Loewe, Ph. D. (Physics)
The Texas Legislature is considering a bill that would
let our youngest school children permanently keep their math and science
textbooks. House Bill 759 by Garnet Coleman (D-Houston) provides that
"For mathematics and science instruction in grades one through six, each
textbook the State Board of Education adopts must have a cost that is low
enough to permit a student to keep the book at the end of the school year, so
that the student may review the core concepts of the essential knowledge and
skills as necessary."
Post
your comments on this article
Texas Public Policy Foundation (2 articles) A Challenge to Texas:
Ethnic Chasm Remains in Mathematics Last week the National Center for Education Statistics released the
2000 Mathematics Report Card for 4th and 8th grade
students in 40 states. The good news is that Texas is one of those leading the
way. The bad news is that there is much more to be done.
Post
your comments on this article
Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (2 articles) The Need to Stand Firm on Flexibility By Mike Judge
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
As President Bush’s education plan has worked its way through Congress over
the past few months, many of the aspects touted by conservatives as the most
beneficial have been removed from the bill. Vouchers, for instance, which were a
hot topic during the election, were quickly cast aside due to their lack in
popularity among Democrats, and even some Republicans. Bush ultimately sought to
move along more bipartisan ground in order that some form of his education plan
would pass Congress.
Post
your comments on this article
Back To School - For Parents As Well
By Daniel S. Konieczko
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
At this time when parents are busily shopping for clothes and supplies to
prepare their children to head back to school, they might want to take a break
from the hustle and bustle to contemplate a more basic question: Can parents
really have a positive impact upon the educational policies that affect their
children?
Post
your comments on this article
Citizen Magazine For
the Children?
The National Education Association says it's dedicated to educating
children, so why is it so busy promoting abortion, homosexuality and a host of
other liberal causes?
By Dick Carpenter
The teacher union boss was not happy.
Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association, had invested much of
his political and professional capital in advancing homosexuality through the
schools. He gave a controversial keynote address at the October 2000 convention
of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educational Network. 1 He had written a
pro-gay open letter this year to U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige. 2
And he pushed for passage of a resolution at the NEA’s annual convention in
early July that would have called for the “involvement of gay…educators in
developing educational material,” and holding up “gay, lesbian, bisexual,
and transgender education employees as role models.” 3
Post
your comments on this article
Home School Legal Defense Association Federal
Alert Update—Committee Considers Step Toward National Test
HSLDA has been battling the expansion of the National Assessment Education
Progrss (NAEP) for five years out of concern that it would eventually become
America's national testing standard. Now our concern is threatening to become a
reality. Many congressmen and senators on the Education Conference Committee for
House
Resolution 1 and Senate
bill 1 are leaning towards a mandatory NAEP test for every state. A
confident National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB—the board responsible for
developing NAEP) is already making plans to change NAEP to match Congress'
potential testing requirements.
ASCD MAKE
ME LAUGH: USING HUMOR IN THE CLASSROOM Tired of spending time after school in detention with
students, a teacher decided to give "accordions" to those who acted
out in class. An accumulation of three "accordions" would require the
offending student to stay after school for a 10-minute session of the teacher
practicing "Lady of Spain" on-what else?-her accordion. Creative
teachers often use humor to deal with one of the more difficult chores they
face-maintaining discipline. In fact, humor in the classroom can be an effective
social tool that builds bridges with students and relieves stress, say educators
and experts alike. Post
your comments on this article
CREDE FIVE
STANDARDS FOR EFFECTIVE TEACHING In stark contrast to the dogmatic, reductionist, controlling,
'one-size-fits-all' curricular prescriptions that have gained so much favor in
the field of education, this Web site proposes a pedagogy that actually respects
the intellect of teachers and students, and that advocates building on their
sociocultural resources in creating advanced, flexible, and diverse environments
for learning.
Post
your comments on this article
Children First America PENNSYLVANIA TAX CREDITS FILLING UP FAST Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge passed a $20 million
tuition tax credit for corporate donations to private scholarship organizations,
and Pennsylvania businesses responded by donating 39% of that amount on the
first day, demonstrating strong business community support for school choice.
Sacramento Bee Test
results show that school reform is still a work in progress
Dan Walters
It's been nearly a decade since Californians were shocked to learn that in
national tests of academic achievement, their children ranked near the bottom,
right down there with the kids in Mississippi.
Business Week What
Makes Sally Learn In the drive to improve the quality of U.S.
education, it's often assumed that shifting to tougher grading standards can
enhance learning, and that "tracking"--putting high achievers in
separate classes--hurts disadvantaged students. A pair of recent National Bureau
of Economic Research studies, however, suggest that only one of these beliefs is
borne out by the evidence.
New
Tax Law Boosts School Construction with Public-Private Partnerships
Fast-growing suburbs, deteriorating cities, and a demographic "echo
boom" of school-aged children have left many communities struggling to
provide adequate classroom space. Provisions of the Economic Growth and Tax
Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 will address that problem for some school
districts by allowing a limited number of communities to transfer the
responsibilities of financing, building, and owning public schools to
private-sector investors who will lease schools to communities. Post
your comments on this article
Education Gadfly 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. Of course, we won't know the answer
to that question for several years. Post
your comments on this article
Colorado Business
Magazine Change
Agent Steve Schuck changed the landscape of Colorado - now he wants to
change our schools
By Alan Katz
It’s natural for Steve Schuck to take an interest in schools. A master land
developer who’s been involved in state politics for two decades, Schuck also
is a onetime teacher and football coach who understood three decades ago the
close connection between Colorado’s economic future and the quality of its
public schools. Post
your comments on this article
Jewish
World Review The
"autism" dragnet Thomas Sowell The U.S. Department of Education and the National
Institutes of Health have launched a campaign to get a government program
created to "identify" children with autism at age two and then subject
them to "intensive" early intervention for 25 hours a week or more. It
sounds good, but so have so many other government programs that created more
problems than they solved. Post
your comments on this article
QUESTIA
launched version 2.0 of Questia today. Version
2.0 includes a vastly improved user interface, better tools, and 60,000 titles.
Questia has achieved their vision of putting a first-rate personal library that
is always available and fully customizable online.
PTO Today PTO
vs. PTA National PTA faces key decisions as local groups increasingly turn to
PTO
By Tim Sullivan
It was perhaps the loudest reaction on the first day of the 2000 national PTA
convention in Chicago this past June. Illinois Superintendent of Schools Dr.
Glenn McGee remembered a day earlier in his career when he made the
“mistake” of referring to parent groups as “PTOs.”
Post
your comments on this article
THE COUNCIL FOR BASIC EDUCATION'S STATEMENT
ON ACT 2001 HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE SCORES Christopher T. Cross, President of the Council for Basic Education
(WASHINGTON DC) "The fact that ACT scores have remained
stagnant for the past five years is really troublesome. There is a clear
indication that the standards-based reform efforts, still in the implementation
phase in many school districts, have not yet impacted our most recent graduates
who did not benefit from a rigorous curriculum throughout their elementary and
secondary school years.
Post
your comments on this article
JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS FOUNDATION SCORES
TOUCHDOWN WITH PROGRAM AIMED AT LOW-INCOME YOUTH New Study Says Honor Rows Program Has Made a Difference For
Jacksonville--Area Youngsters
Princeton, NJ--A National Football League (NFL) team's foundation has developed
a project that motivates economically and socially disadvantaged
Jacksonville-area youth to improve behaviors and could be a national model for
other sports foundations, says an independent assessment. A report from the
Institute for Child Health Policy finds that the Jacksonville Jaguars
Foundation's Honor Rows Program supported school performance, inspired youth to
improve personal behaviors, and enhanced self-confidence among participants. It
also has elevated the Jaguars as a model corporate citizen that gives back to
its community.
Post
your comments on this article
Lexington Institute The Rise of Private Teacher Training By Robert Holland
Is a regular contributor to EducationNews
Executive Summary
A shortage of teachers and the growing demand of parents for choices in their
children’s education are combining to spur the entry of the private sector
into teacher training, which has largely been left to a state monopoly. Both
for-profit and nonprofit organizations are putting resources into teacher
preparation.
Post
your comments on this article
Tennessee Institute for Public Policy Going
Back to School: Improving Public School Food Service Operations
J. C. Bowman
Is a regular contributor to EducationNews
NASHVILLE --Local school districts should be able to look to state
government to provide research expertise, policy recommendations, and technical
assistance to help them channel more tax dollars away from non-academic purposes
and back into the classroom. If we are going to expect state agencies and
educational organizations to assist with improving academic performance, doesn’t
it make sense that non-academic functions receive similar assistance?
Post
your comments on this article
Education Policy Institute
AFT
Union Neglects Teachers A Weekly Column by Myron Lieberman
Inside AFT (the American Federation of Teachers on-line publication)
for the week ending July 30 illustrates several points about this occupational
conglomerate. The first item of six, trashes the Bush Administration's position
on a patients' rights bill. The next item describes an AFT organization victory
at Lawrence Memorial Hospital in New London, Connecticut. Union strategy
"featured one-on-one organizing at the work site, as well as house visits,
distribution of two organizing videos, targeted mailings of flyers and
newsletters, a special Web site linked from the state federations' web page, and
media outreach through local radio interviews and letters to the editor."
Post
your comments on this article
Parent Power Is
this math fuzzy? Paul Clopton
Fuzzy Math is one of the phrases used to refer to the many newer mathematics
programs that are designed around current fads in mathematics education and
often are inadequate for effective learning. The word fuzzy is used in the
sense of warm and fuzzy or fuzzy thinking, and does not refer to advanced topics
like fuzzy logic.
Post
your comments on this article
NCES
NCES has just released the report, "English
Literacy and Language
Minorities in the United States." This
report provides an in-depth look at
adult residents of the United States who were either born in other
countries or were born in the United States but spoke a language other
than English as young children. The report explores the English fluency
and literacy of this population, their fluency and literacy in their
native languages, and their employment patterns and earnings.
Educational Testing Service Model
Schools and Reading Networks – Education Reform That Works
Kurt M. Landgraf, President & CEO Educational Testing Service
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
The fundamental principles driving President Bush’s ambitious education reform
agenda are clear – all children deserve a chance to succeed, the federal
government should partner with states and schools to ensure success, and
intervention programs can make a difference. Post
your comments on this article
The Case for Federal Policy to
Raise Educational Standards
by Kevin R. Kosar
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
This article argues for federal policy to raise state educational standards. It
does this in five steps. First, it reviews the evidence on student educational
under-achievement. Second, it argues that under-achievement is worthy of a
policy response. Third, it shows that states have thus far failed to raise
standards. Fourth, it considers the evidence on standards reforms on improving
educational achievement. Finally, it outlines a federal policy to raise state
educational standards.
Post
your comments on this article
Washington Times Teaching
to the test
Denise Barnes
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Just imagine having to read a six-inch block of type, analyze it and then answer
the question in 1.8 minutes. It's the equivalent of trying to read a Reader's
Digest article in the grocery store line when the guy in front fo you is about
to get his change.
USA Today NEA
takes stand against tests
Anti-testing positions adopted by the National Education Association: *
The NEA supports legislation allowing parents to opt their children out of all
mandated standardized tests without penalty for students, parents, teachers or
schools.
UCLA SCHOOL MENTAL HEALTH PROJECT/CENTER FOR MENTAL HEALTH IN
SCHOOLS Teacher
Turnover: Dropout or Pushout? Are there mental health implications?
No one doubts there is a problem recruiting good teachers. It is
becoming evident that retaining teachers is an even bigger problem. Researchers
suggest that poor working conditions and lack of significant on-the-job training
and support are causing many new teachers to leave within five years. Included
in descriptions of poor working conditions are factors that, in motivational
terms, can be seen as threatening feelings of competence, self-determination,
and relatedness.
Post
your comments on this article
Town Hall The
war against competition hurts boys
by Marvin Olasky
At many schools, the classic competitions are dead. Dodge ball is out. Despite
the high profile of the National Spelling Bee, classroom spelling bees are much
less frequent. At some elementary school basketball games, no one keeps score.
It's
a mad, mad, world
by John Leo
More news from the annals of zero tolerance and the continuing campaign to make
the culture ever more deranged:
Publik
skool biggotz
by Michelle Malkin
Nothing breeds sophomoric resentment like academic success. So it's no surprise
that home schoolers and their children are the target of a spiteful T-shirt sold
in retail stores and online.
Center for the Study of Jobs & Education in
Wisconsin And the United States
The Phony Intellectualism of So-called School Reform in the United States Is
Harmful to Children and Public Education
By Dennis W. Redovich
Appearing Exclusively every Monday
Wisconsin State Supt. of Public Instruction Elizabeth Burmaster has received
some national news media attention for her comments that the Bush education
plan should be labeled "No Child Left Untested" rather than the
official Bush title of "No Child Left Behind". Where are the
priorities? “I think the federal plan takes us down the wrong road. The right
road, she said, is to emphasize steps such as reductions in class size,
improvement in early childhood educational programs and efforts to improve the
overall quality of teaching.” The school reform of Bush and the conservative
think tanks is phony intellectualism and elitism. Post
your comments on this article
The Tip of the Iceberg: SURR
Schools and Academic Failure in New York City
Introduction
Joseph P. Viteritti
Research Professor of Public Administration, New York University
Data Assembly
Kevin Kosar
Ph.D. Candidate in Politics, New York University
Since 1989 the New York State Education Department has been issuing a list of
low performing public schools that are targeted for corrective action. They
supposedly run the risk of being closed if significant improvements are not
made. Over the years nearly ninety percent of the schools placed on the
notorious SURR list (Schools Under Registration Review) have been located in New
York City, even though only twenty percent of the schools in the state are New
York City public schools. Presently 98 of 114 schools on the list are in the
five boroughs. Previous reports have shown that a disproportionate number of the
children assigned to these schools are African American or Hispanic. These
schools also have a disproportionate number of teachers who are not fully
certified and have less than five years of experience in the classroom. Post
your comments on this article
PediatricNeurology
Martin L. Kutscher, MD, Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics and
Neurology, New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY; Pediatric Neurological
Assoc., White Plains, NY. We’ve
Been Missing the Point “Johnny is very active!He never stops moving.He
gets distracted by any little noise, and has the attention span of a flea.
Often, he acts before he thinks. His sister, Jill, is often in a fog.Sometimes, she’s just so spaced!”
That is how we typically consider children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder (ADHD). OK, not so bad. But that is often only the tip of
the iceberg. Here is another likely description of the whole picture for a child
with ADHD: Post
your comments on this article
Here are some interesting conclusions taken from the results of
the most
recent (2000) NAEP scores in mathematics. 1. Calculator use "At grade 4 more frequent calculator use was associated with
lower scores, while at grades 8 and 12 the opposite was generally true--students who said
they used calculators more often tended to score higher than their peers
who reported using calculators less frequently." 2. Computer availability There was no meaningful correlation apparent between computer availability and math performance in any grade. See Chapter 5, p. 147 3. Textbooks At all grades, students who reported doing problems from a textbook
regularly scored higher than those who did not. In grades 8 and 12,
"those who reported doing math problems from a textbook daily scored highest."
(The average score was 281 for those answering "daily" versus 265 for
those answering "weekly.") See Chapter 6, p. 157, 158 4. Cooperative learning At all grades, students who reported talking with other students during
class about how to solve problems "every day" or "weekly"
scored lower than those who reported doing it "MONTHLY." "Monthly" also scored
higher than "hardly ever." Post
your comments on this article
New South Wales Department of Education and
Training SUBMISSION
TO HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES INQUIRY INTO THE EDUCATION OF BOYS The NSW Department of Education and Training welcomes this
parliamentary inquiry into the education of boys. It is appropriate and timely
for the Commonwealth to take a leadership role in this issue of national
significance. The focus of the inquiry on the social, cultural and educational
factors affecting the education of boys signifies the complexity of the issues
facing schools and other educational institutions with regard to gender.
Review of
Teacher in NSW and the Report "Quality Matters" The review of teacher education in NSW provides an opportunity for
teachers and the community to help create the conditions for improving the
professional standing and quality of teaching in our schools and colleges.
National Education Association NEW REPORT
URGES POLICYMAKERS TO ADDRESS NEEDS OF RURAL SCHOOLS
"Why Rural Matters: The Need for Every State to Take Action on Rural
Education" offers a state-by-state look at the education needs of our
country's rural communities. NEA recently sponsored a congressional briefing on
this report. See for yourself why it's so important.
Post
your comments on this article
Children First America THE
COMING DEMOCRATIC EMBRACE OF PARENTAL CHOICE. A report from the Federal
Election Commission reveals the depth of teacher union political activity
and power. The report reveals that the National Education Association
essentially purchased not only seats on Democratic campaign committees in 1996 but also the right to approve or reject the Democratic agenda. However,
Democrats have played leading rolls supporting school choice in Milwaukee, Cleveland and elsewhere.
Post
your comments on this article
ABC News
Looking for an Answer
Home Schooling Offers Alternative, Challenge for Parents and KidsBy Dean Schabner
Aug. 10 — Five youngsters are drowned by their mother in their bathtub. Three
teenagers are killed in a murder-suicide. A 14-year-old runner-up from a
previous year wins a national spelling bee. A Web search for "home
schooling" would have turned up all of these stories.
Wichita Eagle
OUR VIEW
Problems
at schools deserve hard look Over the past six years, the deal the for-profit Edison Project made
with the Wichita school district has been: Give the corporation some schools,
let it apply good management and know-how, add a mix of public and private
funding, and they'd show us just how much more effective education can be.
Post
your comments on this article
White House Summit on Early Childhood
Cognitive Development U.S.
Secretary of Education Rod Paige
Thank you, Mrs. Cheney, for that kind introduction. It is an honor to be a part
of an administration that has so many strong advocates for education, and of
those advocates, you are one of the most eloquent. I know you have been working
on a book for the past few months, and I hear you are nearly finished. Like many
people, I am eager to read your book, and also eager to have you working
alongside us for America's children fulltime.
Address
by Susan B. Neuman Assistant Secretary for Elementary and
Secondary Education
U.S. Department of Education
"Access to Print: Problem, Consequences and Instructional Solutions"
Mrs. Bush, thank you for the opportunity to speak at this important conference.
Today, I want to take the opportunity to discuss some of my work in early
literacy over the past ten years in Philadelphia at Temple University, and then
at the University of Michigan.
Center for the Study of Jobs
& Education in Wisconsin And the United States The
Corporate Conquest Of The University By Robert Miranda
Is a regular contributor to EducationNews
The debate over stem-cell research is missing the obvious deformity
caused by university/corporate partnerships. While we are inundated with the
moral and ethical aspects of the debate, a more profound and fundamental issue
for us to contemplate continues to be ignored. Post
your comments on this article
Education Week Mentoring
Can't Do It All
Author and educator Harry K. Wong says that new teachers need systematic
and sustained induction programs, not just mentors.
Plano Parental Rights Council Media Bias in reporting Educational Progress
By Susan Sarhady
President, Plano Parental Rights Council
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
Mathematics achievement has been in the news lately because of the recent
release of the results of the 2000 National Mathematics Assessment. Results are
reported on a state level as well as a national level. The assessment is
administered to a sampling of 4th, 8th and 12th grade students. Here is the
short list of some of the headlines the report generated: Post
your comments on this article
Section 504 Compliance Advisor Homeschool
placement can trigger a special education obligation Copyright 2001 LRP Publications
Section 504 Compliance Advisor...08/02/2001 By Perry Zirkel*
When homeschooled children have one or more disabilities, it raises issues about
the intersection of homeschooling under state law and special education under
the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. This Q&A discusses that
issue using published court and administrative rulings.
Q: Is homeschooling under state law the same as homebound placement under the
IDEA?
Insight Magazine What
Happened to the Great Ideas? By John Berlau jberlau@InsightMag.com Philosopher Mortimer J. Adler recently passed away, but his legacy lives on
in the Great Books programs he inspired and succeeded in establishing across the
nation.
Hyper-Drugging
of Active Kids By Kelly Patricia O’Meara komeara@InsightMag.com State legislatures are beginning to take action to rein in the widespread
practice of drugging hyperactive children to control their undesirable behavior
in the classroom.
Students
Confront Campus News Bias By Erik Baptist
Despite the general lack of support from the liberal university establishment,
conservative college newspapers nationwide continue to spark intellectual debate
and challenge the left.
Schooled
for Life By Stephen Goode sgoode@InsightMag.com Christendom College is one of 30 distinguished colleges/universities which, Insight
has found, still teach the fullness of the Western academic traditions.
Schools
Giving P.E. Short Shrift By Timothy W. Maier tmaier@InsightMag.com Schools across the country are decreasing class time, money and resources
devoted to physical education, which critics claim is harming the health of U.S.
children.
A
Lesson Learned the Hard Way By Sheila R. Cherry scherry@InsightMag.com After Washington public schools promised reforms, a mother and son found out
firsthand that some teachers would sacrifice students’ futures to save their
own jobs.
The Public Interest The Surprising Consensus On
School Choice
By Jay P. Greene
There has been a flurry of activity in school choice research in the last few
years. As a result, where we used to have only theories and limited evidence we
now have a relatively solid understanding of the likely effects of school
choice. I say "relatively" because all research is necessarily
imperfect and additional study can always improve the confidence with which we
draw conclusions. But the research on school choice includes several
random-assignment studies, the "gold-standard" of research design,
where subjects are randomly assigned to treatment and control groups as in a
medical study. I can think of only one other education policy issue (the effect
of class-size reduction) that has been the subject of even one significant
random-assignment experiment, let alone several "gold-standard"
studies. Post
your comments on this article
PTO Today PTO
Power
Entire town in on the act for this group's special
reading night.
Celebrity Night Coaxes Kids to Read
In Defense of Testing Series
ETS on the Issues Testing
Snapshots Should Not Lead to Snap Judgments By Kurt M. Landgraf, President and Chief Executive Officer
Educational Testing Service
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
The world of politics is often one of sound bites and snapshots, which may at
times produce sweeping summations and snap judgments. When that occurs, the
result is often a series of images bereft of context that linger like holograms.
Unfortunately, that’s what too often happens in the course of political
campaigns and debates when student test scores are used to generalize about the
relative health and well being of education in the United States. Post
your comments on this article
Alexis de Tocqueville Institution,
Education reform: the endgame Why
Bush’s School Testing Provisions Are Worth A Fight By Larry Parker
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
Education reformers have, understandably, lost interest in President Bush’s
school reform proposal, now being finalized by a Congressional conference
committee after spending six months being de-toothed and diluted. Even so,
decisions will be made in the coming weeks that could not only have a major
impact on how the package plays politically in 2004 - but also, more
importantly, will determine whether the proposal helps improve America’s
lowest-performing schools in time to help this fall’s kindergarteners before
they would graduate high school in 2014 (the year some actions to correct
failing schools in the Senate version of the bill might actually take effect).
So it might be worth the White House’s time, and that of supporters of real
education reform, to pay attention and make their voices heard during this
critical endgame. Post
your comments on this article
Insight
Magazine The
Dark Side of Nationwide Tests By B.K. Eakman
President Bush’s education initiative calls for the testing of every student
in the nation, but these ‘assessments’ in the past involved Big
Brother-style psychological profiling.
The proponents of President George W. Bush’s education initiative, called
“No Child Left Behind,” believe that they can make schools accountable to
parents as well as taxpayers. The centerpiece of this, as it appears in the
amendments to the Elementary and Secondary School Act, still in House-Senate
conference as Insight goes to press, is a massive nationwide program designed to
test every student in grades three to eight in reading and math. Both House and
Senate bills propose some $400 million in federal funds to be sent to the states
to devise and administer the tests on a state-by-state basis. Post
your comments on this article
San Diego Union Tribune (California)
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON Time
for a revolution in education If it were a product, it would have been recalled. If it were a
politician, it would have been impeached. If it were a horse, it would have been
taken behind the barn and shot.
Reed Martin DOES
YOUR CHILD HAVE A "BEHAVIORAL" PROBLEM
OR AN "EDUCATIONAL" PROBLEM?
"Suspension or expulsion is not normally appropriate as a first-line
response to behavior problems resulting from a student's disability, even if the
conduct in question violates school rules.......
Sometimes, with certain children, what looks like simple misbehavior
is actually a more complicated problem whose remedy should be integrated into
the child's overall program of special education."
School Mental Health
Project/Center for Mental Health in Schools Mental
Health in Schools: Guidelines, Models, Resources, & Policy Considerations
The Center is working with the Policy Leadership Cadre for Mental Health in
Schools on an initiative for using the document to move the field forward. As
a result of the initiative, various organizations have begun sharing the work
with their members. It is being included in conference presentations and
policy discussions.
Center for the Study of Jobs and Education In Wisconsin and
U.S. An
American Paradox and Tragedy- Math Test Results Are Much Ado About
Nothing By Dennis W. Redovich
Appearing Exclusively every Monday The headline
in the July 3 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “Only 1 in 4 students moves beyond
basic math, test finds”, summarizes what is being said in the popular media
nation-wide and by politicians and education pundits critical of American
public education. “The results of the 2000 National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP) known as the nations report card found that most
students had trouble on a test involving measurement, geometry and algebra, as
well as questions requiring them to think their way through statistics “ The
reactions to the NAEP math test results are absolutely, “much ado about
nothing”. Post
your comments on this article
National Bureau of Economic Research
Favorable Long-Term Effects of Head Start In
"Longer Term Effects of Head Start" authors Eliana Garces, Duncan
Thomas, and Janet Currie find that Head Start generates long-term improvements
in important outcomes such as schooling attainment, earnings, and crime
reduction. They find that disadvantaged whites who had been enrolled in Head
Start were more likely to graduate from high school and to have attended college
than siblings who did not. White children of high school dropouts also had
higher average earnings between the ages of 23 and 25 if they attended Head
Start. African-Americans who attended Head Start were "significantly less
likely to have been booked or charged with a crime" compared to siblings
who did not participate in Head Start. Finally, the authors find that male
African-Americans were more likely to complete high school and to participate in
the labor force if they had attended Head Start. Post
your comments on this article
BeLogical The Myth of
Self-Esteem July 30th edition of the Dallas Morning
News. by Lynn Woolley
The family psychologist John K. Rosemond tells the story of a banner placed over
a mirror in an Alabama elementary school. It says: "You are now looking at
one of the most special people in the whole wide world." You’ve probably
seen this type of thing if you’ve visited your child’s school. It’s part
of the education fad of "self-esteem." Post
your comments on this article
Children First America GEORGE WALLACE IS GONE BUT SEGREGATION LIVES Fritz S. Steiger, President
Congratulations go out to Lesley Searcy of the
Children’s Scholarship Fund Alabama for landing a
very effective op-ed piece concerning segregation and choice in Sunday’s
edition of the Birmingham News. With an accompanying picture of George
Wallace guarding the door of a segregated government school, Lesley’s
column read "In 1957, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus ordered the
Arkansas National Guard to forcibly halt the desegregation of public schools.
President Eisenhower sent federal troops into Little Rock to enforce the
landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision, but several other
Southern governors followed the Faubus example. Our own Gov. George Wallace
‘stood in the schoolhouse door’ to prevent desegregation and famously
promised to maintain ‘segregation forever.’ Wallace and Faubus have passed
away, but public school segregation continues. Segregation has been transformed
from explicit racial segregation into de facto segregation based on
income...Segregated housing patterns...have led to segregated public
schools."
Rand (2 articles) School
Violence Prevention Testimony pdf Jaana Juvonen
Nationally publicized school shootings have highlighted potential precursors of
violence, such as persistent bullying. Although we lack substantial data on the
long-term effects of being bullied, getting bullied or victimized by peers is
now
considered a warning sign of potentially violent students.
Options
for Restructuring the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act: Report
with Background Papers and Focus Group Summary,
Peter H. Reuter et al.
This report contains all the outputs of a project undertaken to review the
structure and performance of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools
and Communities Act (SDFSCA) and to assess options for strengthening it.
As part of this study, a conference was held at which practitioners,
researchers, and government officials considered the findings and
conclusions presented in three commissioned papers, the proceedings of
focus groups of knowledgeable practitioners in two school districts, and
a review of the literature describing the program established by SDFSCA
and its performance to date. This volume contains the executive summary
of the study,1 the backgound paper prepared to provide information for
the conference participants, a summary of the focus group discussions,
and the commissioned papers.
Achieve Standards:
How High is High Enough? (Spring 2001)
States have used different strategies to phase in higher standards. And
higher education and businesses need to send more explicit signals to students
that higher standards matter. They can do this by aligning their admissions and
hiring decisions to students' high school performance.
S TA N DA R D S
Policymakers and educators want students
to graduate from high school with the HIGH Is ENOUGH?
New Democrats School
Construction Sara Mead
A Third Way solution to the problem of infrastructure challenges faced by
schools: state or regional infrastructure banks capitalized by the Federal
Government to leverage state and local funding.
Too many of America's children attend school in overcrowded and even unsafe
conditions. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES),
nearly $127 billion in repair and renovation are needed to upgrade our nation's
schools to good condition. Over the next decade, billions more will be needed to
accommodate growing enrollments and remedy the overcrowding that hampers
one-quarter of our schools. States and localities are struggling to meet the
challenge of providing safe, decent facilities for their students. As a result
parents, educators and state and local governments are increasingly turning to
Washington for help meeting this challenge.
Hoover Institute Privatization:
A Solution for School Inequities?
by John E. Chubb Economically disadvantaged students suffer a
number of financial inequities in public education. The school districts in
which poor children live often have fewer tax dollars to spend on education than
do districts in which middle-class children live. Poorer districts also tend to
pay lower teacher salaries than richer districts and have difficulty attracting
and retaining teachers.
Testing
Is about Openness and Openness Works
by Caroline M. Hoxby In the past decade, forty-nine of the fifty
states have adopted some form of statewide testing, which they are beginning to
report in user-friendly "school report cards." Most of the report card
programs have no stakes or low stakes, so what purpose do they serve?
Do
American Students Study Enough?
by Herbert J. Walberg Americans spend more on schooling students than
nearly all other affluent countries. Yet our students make the fewest gains in
reading, mathematics, and science. Although they score about average on tests in
the early grades, they come in last in high school. How can the most productive
country on the planet have the least productive schools?
Education Contracting System "Reinventing
Public Education" Provides More Privatizing Erasers by Daniel Pryzbyla
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
"The report shows in detail how a contracting system would work and how it
can be established, replacing the entire existing public education governance
system School boards in the big cities can be the first to take advantage of the
new opportunity by contracting out for operation of their lowest performing
schools Success in the most difficult places will make the case for the
widespread adoption of contracting" Post
your comments on this article
Harvard Education Letter Retaining
the Next Generation of Teachers: The Importance of School-Based Support
Clever incentives may attract new teachers, but only improving the culture and
working conditions of schools will keep them
By Susan Moore Johnson, Sarah Birkeland, Susan M. Kardos, David Kauffman, Edward
Liu, and Heather G. Peske of The Project on the Next Generation of Teachers at
the Harvard Graduate School of Education
Throughout the United States, school officials are either anticipating or
already experiencing a teacher shortage. The projected need to fill 2.2 million
vacancies by 2010 will be intensely felt in high-poverty schools and in certain
subjects (math, science, and foreign languages) and programs (bilingual and
special education). Recognizing this, policymakers are devising ways to make
teaching more attractive, and the competition for high-quality teachers is
fierce. Recruiters in various districts can now waive preservice training, offer
signing bonuses, forgive student loans, and even provide mortgage subsidies or
health club memberships. While such strategies may well increase the supply of
new teachers to schools, they provide no assurance of keeping them there, for
they are but short-term responses to long-term challenges. Post
your comments on this article
COUNCIL FOR BASIC EDUCATION'S STATEMENT
ON NATIONAL ASSESSMENT OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS (NAEP) MATHEMATICS 2000 RESULTS
BEYOND BASIC
ROBERT C. RICE, Sr. Vice President of the Council for Basic Education, and
Christopher T. Cross, President of the Council for Basic Education
(WASHINGTON DC) "The release of today's NAEP math results show a continuing
improvement in scores for fourth-grade and eighth-grade students across the
nation. This is good news, but it's no more than what we should expect. Our
sights should not be focused on a basic level of achievement, but on looking
forward to meeting the challenges of proficient and advanced achievement in
math," said Robert C. Rice, Sr. Vice President at the Council for Basic
Education (CBE). Post
your comments on this article
Citizen Magazine P
is for Politically Correct
Think Parent Teacher Associations uphold family
values in the public schools? Think again.
By Heather Koerner
Think Parent Teacher
They're involved in
everything from back-to-school night to teacher appreciation lunches, from
classroom volunteering to shelving library books. They raise money through
dances, golf tournaments, cookbooks and, yes, even pig-kissing contests. Post
your comments on this article
A Direct and Focused Approach Necessary
Conditions for Fundamental Reform of Schools of Education Martin A. Kozloff
Is a regular contributor to the EducationNews Bulletin Board
I. What is Needed
The history of schools of education is a history of remarkable mediocrity and
resistance to change in the face of research on effective instruction (i.e.,
what new teachers really need to know), scholarly criticism of faddish
"pedagogies," consumer dissatisfaction, low status in universities,
and billions of dollars spent on reform "initiatives." It is virtually
certain that there will be no fundamental change in how education schools train
new teachers unless a more direct and focused approach is used. Such an approach
would involve three components. Post
your comments on this article
NCES The
NAEP mathematics results for the nation at grades 4, 8, and 12,
and for 46 states and other jurisdictions at grades 4 and 8 will be
released today, August 2 at 10:30 a.m. EDT.
Also to be released at that time will the new NAEP Data Analysis Tool, designed for a wide range of NAEP data users and permitting them to create
custom tables from all major national and state NAEP assessments since 1990.
The 2000 results will add further information to results from the NAEP 1990,
1992, and 1996 mathematics state and national assessments. Links for all of
these products and tools will be available through:
Additionally, please participate in StatChat
Live
on today, August 2, at 2 p.m. EDT, when Associate Commissioner Peggy G. Carr
will answer your
questions about the NAEP 2000 national and state mathematics
results.
NCES has just released "Home
Schooling in the United States: 1999."
In the spring of 1999, an estimated 850,000 students nationwide were being
homeschooled. This report, based on data from the Parent Survey of the National
Household Education Survey, 1999, contains information about the characteristics
of home schooled children and their families, parent's reasons for homeschooling,
and public school support for homeschoolers.
Evergreen Freedom Foundation Washington
Education Association is
found guilty...again
By Lynn Harsh, Evergreen Freedom Foundation
Olympia - Thurston County Superior Court Judge Gary Tabor today issued a
“guilty” verdict against the Washington Education Association (WEA) for what
he characterized as intentional violations in the union’s use of mandatory
teacher dues and fees for politics. The combined penalties, sanctions and
reimbursements ordered by the court make this the largest fine ever levied
against the WEA - likely more than $500,000.
Environmental education is under assault SMOKE
AND MIRRORS By John F. Borowski
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
Florida's Orange County Convention Center is big. Big enough to hold the Sears
Tower, if you laid it on its side. So big you could walk 10 miles and never
leave the cement behemoth. A hulking structure like this was necessary to host
the recent National Science Teachers Convention, the largest gathering of
educators in the nation more than 14,000 science teachers, and hundreds of
exhibitors passing out armloads of pamphlets, packets, books, stickers, posters,
and other goodies. Post
your comments on this article
World Game Institute Middle
School and Museum Program
What if it were up to middle school students to determine the fate of the world?
How would they respond? What would happen? Would their actions lead to the
destruction of the world? Or a gameboy in every backpack?
Guess again! Middle school students playing the World Game are recommending more
efficient energy consumption, better distribution of food and increased access
to education. These fairly remarkable insights are all embedded in a process
that is filled with learning - and it's fun! Post
your comments on this article
Center for the Study of Jobs and Education In Wisconsin and
U.S. An
American Paradox and Tragedy- Math Test Results Are Much Ado About
Nothing By Dennis W. Redovich
Appearing Exclusively every Monday The headline
in the July 3 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “Only 1 in 4 students moves beyond
basic math, test finds”, summarizes what is being said in the popular media
nation-wide and by politicians and education pundits critical of American
public education. “The results of the 2000 National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP) known as the nations report card found that most
students had trouble on a test involving measurement, geometry and algebra, as
well as questions requiring them to think their way through statistics “ The
reactions to the NAEP math test results are absolutely, “much ado about
nothing”. Post
your comments on this article
National Bureau of Economic Research
Favorable Long-Term Effects of Head Start In
"Longer Term Effects of Head Start" authors Eliana Garces, Duncan
Thomas, and Janet Currie find that Head Start generates long-term improvements
in important outcomes such as schooling attainment, earnings, and crime
reduction. They find that disadvantaged whites who had been enrolled in Head
Start were more likely to graduate from high school and to have attended college
than siblings who did not. White children of high school dropouts also had
higher average earnings between the ages of 23 and 25 if they attended Head
Start. African-Americans who attended Head Start were "significantly less
likely to have been booked or charged with a crime" compared to siblings
who did not participate in Head Start. Finally, the authors find that male
African-Americans were more likely to complete high school and to participate in
the labor force if they had attended Head Start. Post
your comments on this article
BeLogical The Myth of
Self-Esteem July 30th edition of the Dallas Morning
News. by Lynn Woolley
The family psychologist John K. Rosemond tells the story of a banner placed over
a mirror in an Alabama elementary school. It says: "You are now looking at
one of the most special people in the whole wide world." You’ve probably
seen this type of thing if you’ve visited your child’s school. It’s part
of the education fad of "self-esteem." Post
your comments on this article
Congratulations go out to Lesley Searcy of the
Children’s Scholarship Fund Alabama for landing a
very effective op-ed piece concerning segregation and choice in Sunday’s
edition of the Birmingham News. With an accompanying picture of George
Wallace guarding the door of a segregated government school, Lesley’s
column read "In 1957, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus ordered the
Arkansas National Guard to forcibly halt the desegregation of public schools.
President Eisenhower sent federal troops into Little Rock to enforce the
landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision, but several other
Southern governors followed the Faubus example. Our own Gov. George Wallace
‘stood in the schoolhouse door’ to prevent desegregation and famously
promised to maintain ‘segregation forever.’ Wallace and Faubus have passed
away, but public school segregation continues. Segregation has been transformed
from explicit racial segregation into de facto segregation based on
income...Segregated housing patterns...have led to segregated public
schools."
Rand (2 articles) School
Violence Prevention Testimony pdf Jaana Juvonen
Nationally publicized school shootings have highlighted potential precursors of
violence, such as persistent bullying. Although we lack substantial data on the
long-term effects of being bullied, getting bullied or victimized by peers is
now
considered a warning sign of potentially violent students.
Options
for Restructuring the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act: Report
with Background Papers and Focus Group Summary,
Peter H. Reuter et al.
This report contains all the outputs of a project undertaken to review the
structure and performance of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools
and Communities Act (SDFSCA) and to assess options for strengthening it.
As part of this study, a conference was held at which practitioners,
researchers, and government officials considered the findings and
conclusions presented in three commissioned papers, the proceedings of
focus groups of knowledgeable practitioners in two school districts, and
a review of the literature describing the program established by SDFSCA
and its performance to date. This volume contains the executive summary
of the study,1 the backgound paper prepared to provide information for
the conference participants, a summary of the focus group discussions,
and the commissioned papers.
Achieve Standards:
How High is High Enough? (Spring 2001)
States have used different strategies to phase in higher standards. And
higher education and businesses need to send more explicit signals to students
that higher standards matter. They can do this by aligning their admissions and
hiring decisions to students' high school performance.
S TA N DA R D S
Policymakers and educators want students
to graduate from high school with the HIGH Is ENOUGH?
New Democrats School
Construction Sara Mead
A Third Way solution to the problem of infrastructure challenges faced by
schools: state or regional infrastructure banks capitalized by the Federal
Government to leverage state and local funding.
Too many of America's children attend school in overcrowded and even unsafe
conditions. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES),
nearly $127 billion in repair and renovation are needed to upgrade our nation's
schools to good condition. Over the next decade, billions more will be needed to
accommodate growing enrollments and remedy the overcrowding that hampers
one-quarter of our schools. States and localities are struggling to meet the
challenge of providing safe, decent facilities for their students. As a result
parents, educators and state and local governments are increasingly turning to
Washington for help meeting this challenge.
Hoover Institute Privatization:
A Solution for School Inequities?
by John E. Chubb Economically disadvantaged students suffer a
number of financial inequities in public education. The school districts in
which poor children live often have fewer tax dollars to spend on education than
do districts in which middle-class children live. Poorer districts also tend to
pay lower teacher salaries than richer districts and have difficulty attracting
and retaining teachers.
Testing
Is about Openness and Openness Works
by Caroline M. Hoxby In the past decade, forty-nine of the fifty
states have adopted some form of statewide testing, which they are beginning to
report in user-friendly "school report cards." Most of the report card
programs have no stakes or low stakes, so what purpose do they serve?
Do
American Students Study Enough?
by Herbert J. Walberg Americans spend more on schooling students than
nearly all other affluent countries. Yet our students make the fewest gains in
reading, mathematics, and science. Although they score about average on tests in
the early grades, they come in last in high school. How can the most productive
country on the planet have the least productive schools?
Education Contracting System "Reinventing
Public Education" Provides More Privatizing Erasers by Daniel Pryzbyla
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
"The report shows in detail how a contracting system would work and how it
can be established, replacing the entire existing public education governance
system School boards in the big cities can be the first to take advantage of the
new opportunity by contracting out for operation of their lowest performing
schools Success in the most difficult places will make the case for the
widespread adoption of contracting" Post
your comments on this article
Harvard Education Letter Retaining
the Next Generation of Teachers: The Importance of School-Based Support
Clever incentives may attract new teachers, but only improving the culture and
working conditions of schools will keep them
By Susan Moore Johnson, Sarah Birkeland, Susan M. Kardos, David Kauffman, Edward
Liu, and Heather G. Peske of The Project on the Next Generation of Teachers at
the Harvard Graduate School of Education
Throughout the United States, school officials are either anticipating or
already experiencing a teacher shortage. The projected need to fill 2.2 million
vacancies by 2010 will be intensely felt in high-poverty schools and in certain
subjects (math, science, and foreign languages) and programs (bilingual and
special education). Recognizing this, policymakers are devising ways to make
teaching more attractive, and the competition for high-quality teachers is
fierce. Recruiters in various districts can now waive preservice training, offer
signing bonuses, forgive student loans, and even provide mortgage subsidies or
health club memberships. While such strategies may well increase the supply of
new teachers to schools, they provide no assurance of keeping them there, for
they are but short-term responses to long-term challenges. Post
your comments on this article
COUNCIL FOR BASIC EDUCATION'S STATEMENT
ON NATIONAL ASSESSMENT OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS (NAEP) MATHEMATICS 2000 RESULTS
BEYOND BASIC
ROBERT C. RICE, Sr. Vice President of the Council for Basic Education, and
Christopher T. Cross, President of the Council for Basic Education
(WASHINGTON DC) "The release of today's NAEP math results show a continuing
improvement in scores for fourth-grade and eighth-grade students across the
nation. This is good news, but it's no more than what we should expect. Our
sights should not be focused on a basic level of achievement, but on looking
forward to meeting the challenges of proficient and advanced achievement in
math," said Robert C. Rice, Sr. Vice President at the Council for Basic
Education (CBE). Post
your comments on this article
Citizen Magazine P
is for Politically Correct
Think Parent Teacher Associations uphold family
values in the public schools? Think again.
By Heather Koerner
Think Parent Teacher
They're involved in
everything from back-to-school night to teacher appreciation lunches, from
classroom volunteering to shelving library books. They raise money through
dances, golf tournaments, cookbooks and, yes, even pig-kissing contests. Post
your comments on this article
A Direct and Focused Approach Necessary
Conditions for Fundamental Reform of Schools of Education Martin A. Kozloff
Is a regular contributor to the EducationNews Bulletin Board
I. What is Needed
The history of schools of education is a history of remarkable mediocrity and
resistance to change in the face of research on effective instruction (i.e.,
what new teachers really need to know), scholarly criticism of faddish
"pedagogies," consumer dissatisfaction, low status in universities,
and billions of dollars spent on reform "initiatives." It is virtually
certain that there will be no fundamental change in how education schools train
new teachers unless a more direct and focused approach is used. Such an approach
would involve three components. Post
your comments on this article
NCES The
NAEP mathematics results for the nation at grades 4, 8, and 12,
and for 46 states and other jurisdictions at grades 4 and 8 will be
released today, August 2 at 10:30 a.m. EDT.
Also to be released at that time will the new NAEP Data Analysis Tool, designed for a wide range of NAEP data users and permitting them to create
custom tables from all major national and state NAEP assessments since 1990.
The 2000 results will add further information to results from the NAEP 1990,
1992, and 1996 mathematics state and national assessments. Links for all of
these products and tools will be available through:
Additionally, please participate in StatChat
Live
on today, August 2, at 2 p.m. EDT, when Associate Commissioner Peggy G. Carr
will answer your
questions about the NAEP 2000 national and state mathematics
results.
NCES has just released "Home
Schooling in the United States: 1999."
In the spring of 1999, an estimated 850,000 students nationwide were being
homeschooled. This report, based on data from the Parent Survey of the National
Household Education Survey, 1999, contains information about the characteristics
of home schooled children and their families, parent's reasons for homeschooling,
and public school support for homeschoolers.
Evergreen Freedom Foundation Washington
Education Association is
found guilty...again
By Lynn Harsh, Evergreen Freedom Foundation
Olympia - Thurston County Superior Court Judge Gary Tabor today issued a
“guilty” verdict against the Washington Education Association (WEA) for what
he characterized as intentional violations in the union’s use of mandatory
teacher dues and fees for politics. The combined penalties, sanctions and
reimbursements ordered by the court make this the largest fine ever levied
against the WEA - likely more than $500,000.
Environmental education is under assault SMOKE
AND MIRRORS By John F. Borowski
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
Florida's Orange County Convention Center is big. Big enough to hold the Sears
Tower, if you laid it on its side. So big you could walk 10 miles and never
leave the cement behemoth. A hulking structure like this was necessary to host
the recent National Science Teachers Convention, the largest gathering of
educators in the nation more than 14,000 science teachers, and hundreds of
exhibitors passing out armloads of pamphlets, packets, books, stickers, posters,
and other goodies. Post
your comments on this article
World Game Institute Middle
School and Museum Program
What if it were up to middle school students to determine the fate of the world?
How would they respond? What would happen? Would their actions lead to the
destruction of the world? Or a gameboy in every backpack?
Guess again! Middle school students playing the World Game are recommending more
efficient energy consumption, better distribution of food and increased access
to education. These fairly remarkable insights are all embedded in a process
that is filled with learning - and it's fun! Post
your comments on this article
Behaviorism to Cognitivism Applications
and Misapplications of Cognitive Psychology to Mathematics Education John R. Anderson
Lynne M. Reder
Herbert A. Simon
Department of Psychology
Carnegie Mellon University There is a frequent misperception that the move from behaviorism to
cognitivism implied an abandonment of the possibilities of decomposing knowledge
into its elements for purposes of study and decontextualizing these elements for
purposes of instruction. We show that cognitivism does not imply outright
rejection of decomposition and decontextualization. We critically analyze two
movements which are based in part on this rejection--situated learning and
constructivism. Situated learning commonly advocates practices that lead to
overly specific learning outcomes while constructivism advocates very
inefficient learning and assessment procedures. The modern
information-processing approach in cognitive psychology would recommend careful
analysis of the goals of instruction and thorough empirical study of the
efficacy of instructional approaches. Post
your comments on this article
K-6 Educators Avoid
Burnout?!? Is It Possible?
Who ever said teaching was easy and unstressful?
Believe it or not, someone said that to me recently. I'll tell you why teaching
is one of the hardest jobs on earth and what you can do to avoid career burnout.
In Defense of Testing Series
Educational Testing Service
Education Reform Reasons
for Positive Thinking By Kurt M. Landgraf, President and Chief Executive Officer
Educational Testing Service
Is a regular contributor to EducationNews
The bipartisan support President George Bush has received in making education
reform his first priority reflects the hope that our leaders have in our
educational system. Educational Testing Service has consulted with the Bush team
and others as various proposals have been debated and refined. The consensus
emerging from the discussions surrounding education reform initiatives provides
a unique oppor-tunity to avoid the negativity and finger-pointing that in the
past clouded the issues and inhibited progress. Post
your comments on this article
Stoney Brook News GROVER
WHITEHURST SWORN IN AS ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF EDUCATION
Will Serve as Director of Educational Research and Improvement
Grover "Russ" Whitehurst, Ph.D., a nationally-recognized authority on
early childhood education and language development who serves as Lead Professor
and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Stony Brook University, was sworn
in today as Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education by U.S. Secretary of Education
Rod Paige.
Education Matters Do
Preschoolers Need Academic Content?
Grover J. Whitehurst
Brianna and the other four-year-olds are sitting in a circle around their
preschool teacher. The teacher says, "Let's plan what we're going to do
next. Who can tell me what they're going to do when we go to our play
centers?" Brianna says, "I going to work with playdoe." The
teacher says, "Tell us what you're going to make." "I want to
make a plate for my Mom," says Brianna. "That's wonderful," says
the teacher, "I'm sure your Mom will really like that." Several other
children chime in with similar plans. Circle time breaks up, and the children go
to the interest center of their choice.
Commonwealth (free registration require) Testing
the Test
Scores are up, but doubts remain about the exam that determines who can teach in
public schools
By Andreae Downs
The headlines shocked the public and rocked the education establishment: It was
the first time the state ever tested would-be teachers to weed out who did--and
did not--belong in front of a public school classroom, and almost 60 percent
failed. House Speaker Thomas Finneran threw rhetorical fuel on the fire by
deriding the test-flunkers as "idiots." But the dismay over a pipeline
of future teachers that seemed clogged with candidates of dubious ability ran
deeper than the legislative leader's inflammatory remark. Post
your comments on this article
Tennessee Institute of Public
Policy
Background on “Knowledge Based” versus “Performance Based” Debate NASHVILLE— Here are just a few
notes I have been able to put together from responses I received on the
“Knowledge Based” versus “Performance Based” debate taking place in the
“conference committee” on HR1 and S1.I
owe a debt of gratitude to all those who helped me assemble background
information.
Center Director of the Center for the Study of Jobs &
Education in Wisconsin Math Mania
and the GED Certificate
By Dennis W. Redovich
Appearing Exclusively every Monday
Math
mania and high stakes testing initiated by math aficionados and elitists of all
persuasions are harming K-12 students nationwide. So-called math illiteracy is
being used as a major weapon to belittle schools and teachers.Students are required to take college entrance tests in math they have
forgotten because they have never used it and then are required to take useless
remedial courses. School bashers and an educationally challenged media then
gleefully use the percentage of students required to take so-called remedial
math courses as “the statistic” to claim the dummying down of American
education. And now the final outrageous mortal blow to poor students is being
planned, requiring useless higher math requirements for a GED certificate which
is the salvation for millions ofthe working poor to improve their status in life.Why? Post
your comments on this article
White House Early Childhood Cognitive Development Summit SUMMARY
COMMENTS
G. Reid Lyon
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
Good morning. I want to take this opportunity to thank the First Lady, Mrs.
Laura Bush, Secretary Paige and Secretary Thompson for their extraordinary
leadership and inspiring dedication to one of the most important goals set forth
by this administration - a goal that seeks to ensure that all of our Nation's
children develop, learn, and thrive to the maximum extent possible in their
homes, in their school settings, in their communities, and in their lives at
every age, including their time in the prenatal world. This is a goal that
states clearly that no child will be left behind.
Post
your comments on this article
Ariannaonline Books
Not Bars: The Anti-Prison Backlash The last 20 years have been a boom time for
America's jailers. New prisons have been popping up at a rate even McDonald's
would envy, while the number of people living behind bars has quadrupled:
"Over 2 million dissatisfied customers served."
National Education Association NATION'S
EDUCATORS SEE GAPS IN EARLY CARE FOR CHILDREN The nation's educators July 25 challenged President Bush to fill the
gaps in early child care. "Our members see firsthand which children receive
the nourishment and social building blocks required to start school and which
children have not," said NEA President Bob Chase.
Texas Home School Coalition RICE
CHANGES ADMISSION POLICY FOR HOME SCHOOLERS
THSC learned this week that the admission policy for home school
graduates at Rice University in Houston has been changed very recently.
Prior to this change, home school graduates were required to take five SAT II
exams for in addition to the other requirements imposed on public school
graduates.
Post
your comments on this article
Early
Head Start
Positive impacts noted for children and families.
‘What Kids Can Do’ Student
Learning, Work, and Voices Featured on Web as ‘What Kids Can Do’ PROVIDENCE, RI—High schoolers are making history in the Rio Grande Valley,
on the South Dakota prairie, and on the wind-whipped coast of downeast Maine.
Mentored by adults in school and out, they are turning around their small-town
economies and meeting new academic challenges as they do it.
Education Policy Institute First
Lady Hosts White House Summit on Learning and Reading
First Lady Laura Bush convened a summit on Early Childhood Cognitive
Development at Georgetown University’s majestic Gaston Hall on Thursday and
Friday. Secretary of Education Rod Paige and Secretary of Health and Human
Services Tommy Thompson co-chaired the White House Summit which featured
researchers, practitioners, and government leaders who agreed that each of us
has a duty to help children achieve their full potential. Speaker after speaker
emphasized the significance of parents and care-givers in early learning
experiences. Post
your comments on this article
“Balanced” Reading Instruction Does It Make Sense?
By Bill Carlson
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
“Almost every premise advanced by whole language (WL)
proponents about how reading is learned has been contradicted by scientific
investigations,”1 says Louisa Cook Moats, one of the world’s foremost
voices for the application of reading research. Moats received her doctorate in
reading from Harvard University and currently serves as Project Director of the
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Early
Interventions Project in Washington, D.C., a multi-year study of early reading
instruction. Post
your comments on this article
Town Hall BAD
TIME FOR CHILDREN IN AMERICA
by Kathleen Parker
"It's a good time to be a child in America," said Tommy Thompson,
secretary of Heath and Human Services, about a new statistical report on
children.
"Stop the Presses! Nothing
More Important Than This" by Donna Garner
Is a regular contributor to EducationNews
*Because education is at the top of nearly everyone's worry list and children
only come this way once in their lives, we as a nation must get this issue
right! Nothing is more important to the future of this nation than the education
of its children. Nothing could be more important than the "No Child Left
Behind" legislation. Please take the time to read over these talking points
and then contact the appropriate legislators. (See list below.) Post
your comments on this article
The Great Grade Inflation Non-Debate Part
VIII: Deafening Silence By Nicholas Stix
Is a regular contributor to EducationNews
"What do you call a black man with a Ph.D.?" Malcolm X famously
asked, forty years ago. He answered, "A nigger!" What was once true of
an educated black man, is today true in academia of an educated white man with
the outcast status of adjunct professor. For in academia, caste rules. Post
your comments on this article
Council for Basic Education (CBE) All
Children Can Learn, If We Focus on Each Child Christopher T. Cross, CBE President, and William E. Brock, CBE Board
Member, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, and Chairman, Bridges Learning Systems
Join Leaders at
The White House Summit on Early Childhood Cognitive Development
(WASHINGTON DC) All children can learn -- a philosophy which the Council for
Basic Education (CBE) has championed for over 45 years.
American School Board Journal Learning
Without School Who home-schools and why? A growing movement raises questions for your
district.
By Lawrence Hardy
Accountability
for Home-Schoolers Who's responsible for making sure home-schooled students get the best
possible education?
By Rebecca Talluto
Research Shall We Dance? National dance standards recognize that not all expression
is verbal.
By Susan Black
School
Law Testing the Limits on Drug Tests: School boards should tread cautiously in
adopting drug-testing policies.
By Benjamin Dowling-Sendor
Your
Turn Vote in this month's survey!
You say: Superintendents should be educators.
We ask: Should you open the door to home-schoolers?
Texas Public Policy Foundation Future
of TAAS Test Hangs in the Balance Future of TAAS Test Hangs in the Balance As the TAAS test and Texas
school accountability system has become part of a national debate over
standards, so has scrutiny of the TAAS and what it measures. A number of recent
studies have revealed flaws in TAAS questions and grading standards. A prime
opportunity to fix these flaws is being considered by Texas Education
Commissioner Jim Nelson as the new "TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and
Skills)" test is being written. The new TAKS will measure totally different
knowledge and skills than those formerly measured by TAAS. Post
your comments on this article
Town Hall A
NEW LOOK AT REFORM
While Congress and President Bush wrangle over the shape of education reform,
one group in Washington has decided to launch a revolution in the education of
poor children on its own. The Washington Jesuit Academy won't open its doors
until 2004, but when it does, 75 poor middle school students will be given an
unparalleled opportunity to escape poverty through a first-rate education. But
the process won't be easy. Students will attend school 12 hours a day, taking
all their meals at the school, completing homework assignments in supervised
study halls, and attending classes on Saturdays, as well as spending summers at
Jesuit-supervised summer camps. The key will be commitment from students and
parents, and a willingness to work hard.
Lew Rockwell Homeschool
Your Children
It's vital for
their well-being, and society's.
Article by Brad Edmonds.
In Defense of Testing Series
Education Testing Service on the Issues (2 of 5 in this series) Teachers
Hold the Key to Education Reform By Kurt M. Landgraf, President and Chief Executive Officer
Educational Testing Service
In the ongoing debate about how best to improve education today, the work of
great teachers must be acknowledged. They hold the key to successful
reform. Post
your comments on this article
Join the lively discussion on the Bulletin Board
Require GED for all American College Admissions Marilyn Keller Rittmeyer, Northwestern University has raised some very good
points regarding this topic. Please join in with your thoughts pro or con.
San Diego Union Tribune (California) Lifting
shroud of secrecy on tests
Fifth in a series on the back-to-balance movement in education.
In 1999, George Schmidt went to war with the testocracy.
That's his term for the collection of politicians, educators and testing
companies that exert increasing power over the future of public school children.
As a teacher in the Chicago public schools, Schmidt was especially disturbed by
the secretive nature of the standardized testing industry.
Ship of State The
National Education Association 2001 Annual Meeting by William R. Darcy
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
Earlier this month the National Education Association (NEA), the union that
controls most of America's public schools and the Democratic Party, held its
annual convention. As always, it had helpful suggestions on how to reform the
public school system and expressed its collective opinion on the leading social
and legal issues of our day. We received this report from our enthusiastic
correspondent, Bobbi Chase, a diehard union member, teacher and delegate to the
NEA Representative Assembly. She tells us about the courageous stands of NEA
delegates and officers.
Post
your comments on this article
National Bureau of Economic Research (2 articles) SCHOOL
STYLE CAN RAISE ACHIEVEMENT David Figlio and Maurice Lucas
"Elementary school students with teachers who are 'tough' graders have
fewer disciplinary problems and show greater improvements in their reading and
math scores."
Though state curricular standards have proliferated since 1983, there remains a
stunning lack of consensus about what comprises a good education, an inability
to agree on how one measures it, and a lack of evidence about whether particular
teaching practices or school organizational forms do a superior job of imparting
it. In "Do High Grading Standards Affect Student Performance?" Post
your comments on this article
"School
Choice and the Distributional Effects of Ability Tracking: Does Separation
Increase Equality?"
David Figlio and Marianne Page
note that along with tougher grading standards, schools traditionally have
sought to challenge high achievers by putting them in classes, or
"tracks," with peers of similar ability. Proponents of ability
tracking argue that grouping students with similar abilities fosters learning by
allowing teachers to fine tune instructional levels. Critics of ability
tracking have argued that it deprives low aptitude students of positive peer
effects arising from contact with more able students, that schools with tracking
programs redistribute resources towards more able students, and that less
capable teachers are assigned to low ability tracks. These criticisms, along
with two decades of empirical studies that seem to
suggest that ability grouping has benefited high-ability children and harmed
low-ability ones, led to an estimated 7 percent drop between 1987 and 1993 in
the number of gifted programs in the United States. Post
your comments on this article
ETHAN ALLEN INSTITUTE "Ideas for Vermont's Future"
Statement by Ethan Allen Institute President John McClaughry
I have been informed by a member of the news media that liberal Democratic
Senators Shumlin, Rivers and McCormack held a news conference this afternoon
to denounce the Ethan Allen Institute's new report, Schoolchildren First. Post
your comments on this article
Welcome to Viewpoint, a
live discussion forum Tuesday, July 24, Noon EDT School
Choice: Destroying or Saving Public Schools? Parental school choice is widespread in
America, unless you're poor. But when low-income families have access to more
educational choices, the prospects that their children will succeed and the
public schools will improve increase. This is the position of the Black
Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) and what it is attempting to educate
America about through its national public information campaign that began in
November 2000. BAEO supports charter schools, tax-supported vouchers and
tuition tax credits that benefit low-income families, private scholarship
programs, home schooling, supplementary education programs and other
innovations in existing public schools as a means to improve the educational
success of black children. Kaleem Caire will be here to answer your questions
concerning this ongoing national debate about American education policy. Post
your comments on this article
Center for the Study of Jobs
& Education in Wisconsin And the United States American
Education and the Spurious Education Reform Charter Schools An
Analysis of the Wisconsin Third Grade Comprehensive Reading Test Results:
Milwaukee Public Schools & Milwaukee Charter Schools
By Dennis W. Redovich
Appearing Exclusively every Monday
It
is unbelievably ironic that the City of Milwaukee, where the exemplary Milwaukee
Public Schools have developed since the 1970’s a unique system of public
school choice, is also the Mecca of the anti-public school movement, charter
schools and private school choice, including religious schools. The anti-public
school movement has been successful in defaming MPS schools and their teachers
who have the gall to belong to a union. How is it possible that a School
District that for 30 years has provided more choice of schools than any in the
U.S. or the world can be the Mecca of private school choice?Big time money from the Bradley Foundations holier than thou Michael
Joyce who believes that public education is an evil form of socialism, the
political power of too many politicians, including both conservative Republicans
and so-called Democrats feeding at the trough of the gluttonous business
interests, and the Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel is the answer. Post
your comments on this article
Town Hall W.'s
Strange Flirtation
by William F. Buckley, Jr.
It! is, alas, hard to measure the collapse of the Bush administration in the
matter of education. The bill that is making its way through Congress has good
points in it, even as it can be said, with Christian resolution, that Senator
Kennedy has good points in him -- indeed it is mostly a Kennedy bill. Post
your comments on this article
New South Wales Department of Education and Training An
education plan for inner Sydney Proposal for change to public schools in the eastern suburbs, inner
city, inner west, inner south west, Ryde and Chatswood
School
to Work School to Work Planning is a process which assists students to
understand and plan for the employment, education and training options available
to them.
Teacher
professional learning portfolios Teacher professional learning portfolios are playing an increasingly
important role in facilitating learning by teachers and in demonstrating the
outcomes of practitioner research and reflective inquiry into teaching practice.
There is a growing recognition of this role in preservice teacher education
programs and in continuing professional development.
US News & World Report Are
boys the weaker sex?
Scientists are discovering very real biological differences that can make boys
more impulsive, more vulnerable to benign neglect, and less efficient classroom
learners. Post
your comments on this article
Time Magazine A
Cowboy Takes L.A. to School Roy Romer thought he’d mastered
politics—but that was before he took over the nation’s worst school system.
Now he’s making waves on the coast
It felt like fight night inside Holman’s Methodist Church in South Los
Angeles. Hundreds of surly teachers, furious and frustrated over their spurned
demand for a double-digit pay raise, had packed the church just after
Thanksgiving to blast the city’s new school superintendent, Roy Romer. Post
your comments on this article
Media Transparency Public
School Privatization & Commercialization Introduction
The conservative movement, being thoroughly anti-union, has at its heart a
desire to rid the United States of the two remaining unionized sectors of the
national economy: Public Education (teachers unions), and Public Employees. In
service of these goals, the movement has moved aggressively against both public
schools and public school teachers.
Of course, the movement is also interested in converting to private profit the
estimated $300+ billion annually spent on public primary and secondary
education.
Tennessee Institute for Public Policy Invention
Becomes the Mother of Necessity Technology in the Classroom
by J.C. Bowman, Tennessee Institute for Public Policy
Invention Becomes the Mother of Necessity: Technology in the Classroom
There is a great deal of continued emphasis on technology as a tool for
improving education. Even former Secretary of Education William Bennett is
getting into the act, by creating an online K-12 school through the Internet.
Internet-based schools could provide new choices to families, and compete
against the monopoly of public education. A leading authority in this field,
Sean Duffy of the Pennsylvania-based Commonwealth Foundation, believes in order
to survive these schools “must be flexible, responsive, and fixated on
cutting-edge quality.” The 21st century marriage of technology and educational
freedom does hold much promise.
Maryland Public Television Middle
and High School Teachers Tackle Cancer Issues and Technology Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and
Maryland Public Television team-up on “BioHealth Link: Questions of Cancer”
summer institute
BALTIMORE -- Seventy middle and high school educators will spend the week of
July 23 through 26 on the medical campus of the Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore, learning about cutting-edge cancer research and prevention and
integrating educational technology tools at the “BioHealth Link: Questions of
Cancer” summer institute. The institute is a partnership of Maryland Public
Television (MPT) and the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public
Health.
National Education Association NEA,
KEY EDUCATION GROUPS MAKE PLEA FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION In an extraordinary show of educator unity,
NEA, the American Association of School Administrators and the National School
Boards Association vowed to hold Congress accountable for the federal promise to
adequately fund special education.
Rural School and Community Trust Featured Project: Rural Action Strengthens Ties between
School and Community in Appalachian Ohio by Elisabeth Higgins Null
Grassroots action to improve school facilities and assure educational funding
equity is the hallmark of the Rural School and Community Organizing Project (RSCO)
in Ohio's Appalachian region, where rural citizens are eagerly awaiting the
state Supreme Court's next ruling on the long-running DeRolph lawsuit. The
work of RSCO to engage rural citizens on school funding and facilities issues
mirrors the equity battles going on throughout the country, and is this
month's featured project.
TC Record Instructional
Policy and Classroom Performance: The Mathematics Reform in California
David K. Cohen, Heather C. Hill | 2000
Drawing upon a teacher survey, this article proposes that successful
instructional policies are themselves instructional: teachers’ opportunities
to learn about and from policy influence both their practice and, at least
indirectly, student achievement.
Educational Research Journal "An
Open Letter to Reid Lyon" pdf file by Steven Strauss M.D., Ph.D.
Dear Dr. Lyon:
Over the last several years, you have obtained notoriety in the popular media
and elsewhere as a leading spokesmen for a certain viewpoint on the psychology
of reading, how reading is learned, and how best to teach it. Post
your comments on this article
The Civil Rights
Project...Harvard University
Schools More Separate: Consequences of a Decade of
Resegregation New Research Findings from The Civil Rights Project at Harvard
University
Almost
half a century after the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that Southern school
segregation was unconstitutional and “inherently unequal,” new statistics
from the 1998-99 school year show that racial and ethnic segregation continued
to intensify throughout the 1990s. This resegregation is happening despite the
nation’s growing diversity, in particular the rapid expansion in the Latino
student population, and is contributing to a growing gap in quality between the
schools being attended by white students and those serving a large proportion of
minority students.Although public
schools in the South remain more integrated than they were prior to the civil
rights revolution, they are resegregating at accelerating rates. In the decade
between 1988 and 1998, most of the progress made toward increasing integration
in the region during the previous two decades was lost. Post
your comments on this article
National Education Research Policy &
Priorities Board Paige
Names Five To National Research Advisory Board U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige has appointed five new members
to the National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board. The 15-member
board works with the Education Department's assistant secretary for educational
research and improvement to develop the agency's long-term research and
development agenda. Post
your comments on this article
Howard Hughes Medical Institute HHMI
Awards $12 Million for Informal Science Education Twenty-nine science museums, nature centers, aquariums, zoos and
other informal science education centers will receive new grants totaling $12
million from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The awards support programs to
strengthen science literacy and enhance science education.
In Defense of Testing Series
Educational Testing Service
Education Reform This
Time, Let’s Do it Right Kurt M. Landgraf, President & CEO Educational Testing
Service
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
President Bush’s reform proposals will fundamentally transform American
education in the 21st century. In the near future, school districts in each
state will be held to a high standard of excellence and will be asked to measure
up. Student achievement will be monitored by standardized tests administered
every year in grades three through eight. Post
your comments on this article
In Defense of Testing Series
Committee for Economic Development
Measuring What Matters Using
Assessment and Accountability to Improve Student Learning EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Americans assign unprecedented importance to the
task of reforming public education so that all children are prepared for
college, for the workplace, for participation in the nation’s civic life, and
for lifelong learning to keep up with the rapid pace of change in the 21st
century. Achieving this goal requires an educational system that focuses first
and foremost on learning and achievement. Solid measures of academic achievement
are essential to such a system. Post
your comments on this article
Alexis de Tocqueville Institution The
Bush education reform: learning from experience By Gregory Fossedal
Is a guest contributor to
EducationNews
President Bush and his Secretary of Education have an important choice in the
coming weeks as they grapple with HR-1 and S-1, the school reform bills that
have passed their respective houses of Congress but now need to be reconciled
before a House-Senate conference committee. If it wants to, the administration
can score cheap debater’s points by criticizing Democrats for trivial delays
as the newly reorganized Senate appoints members to the joint committee. There
is, however, an alternative. Post
your comments on this article