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Achieving 
“High Quality" in the  Selection,
Preparation  and  Retention of  Teachers

Can Star Teachers Create Learning Communities? To transform a school into a learning community a savvy educational leader needs to support the very best teachers.

Creating Effective Schools in Failed Urban Districts

"Alternative Certification: Intended and Unintended Consequence”

The Haberman Educational Foundation Helps School Districts Hire Quality Teachers and Principals for High-Need Students

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Commentaries and Report 

For today's postings

Texas Public Policy Foundation (2 articles)
Losing the Race: 
The SAT and College Admissions
by Chris Patterson
Post your comments on this article

Future of TAAS Test Hangs in the Balance
Policy Action Update  (Available in .html and .pdf format)
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

Texas Public Policy Foundation (2 articles)
Losing the Race: 
The SAT and College Admissions
by Chris Patterson
Post your comments on this article

Future of TAAS Test Hangs in the Balance
Policy Action Update  (Available in .html and .pdf format)
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

The National Center for Alternative Teacher Certification
Dr. Vicky Dill Among Key Panelists at the Education Consortium of the States (ECS); Rod Paige also Present.
Panel Question:
“Can Alternative Teacher Certification Appropriately Address the Teacher Shortage?”
Dr. Vicky Dill, Senior Vice President of The National Center for Alternative Teacher Certification at the Haberman Educational Foundation, presented at and attended the Education Consortium of the States held in Philadelphia (PA) from July 18-21.
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?

Phi Delta Kappan
Leadership in Education: Five Commonalities, 
by Mark F. Goldberg

What Did the Massachusetts Teacher Tests Say About American Education?, 
by R. Clarke Fowler

Coaching Isn't Just for Athletes: The Role of Teacher Leaders, 
by Ellen Guiney

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

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?

Phi Delta Kappan
Leadership in Education: Five Commonalities, 
by Mark F. Goldberg

What Did the Massachusetts Teacher Tests Say About American Education?, 
by R. Clarke Fowler

Coaching Isn't Just for Athletes: The Role of Teacher Leaders, 
by Ellen Guiney

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.
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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.
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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.
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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 of  the working poor to improve their status in life.  Why?        
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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.
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Should English teachers be held accountability for math scores?
Changing the Subject or would you hire a good clarinet teacher to teach your child the violin? 
By Jerome Dancis
Roughly, the first (milder) half of this article appeared in the Forum column of the Prince George's Extra Section of the Washington Post , April 21, 1999, Page 4. Parts enclosed in [] were not included.
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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. 
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WorldNet Daily
Baylor U. pulls 'bait and switch'
College accepts home-schoolers,
then abruptly rescinds admission
By Diana Lynne
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
Home-school advocates are challenging an apparent bait and switch by Baylor University, saying it "smacks of discrimination."

Mathematica Policy Research
Making Schools Career-Focused, Final Report, March 1, 2001, pdf

Black-White Differences in Education
Read about educational achievement and inequality.

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.
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“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.
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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.

University of Pittsburgh/NCEE NYC First Editions of 
The New Standards Performance Standards for Mathematics and English Language Arts

"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.)
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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.
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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.
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Reed Martin
The school says they want to retain my learning disabled son in 3rd grade because of his poor reading. They say their new policy is "no social promotion." Is retention a good idea for him?
Retention is only a good idea for the politicians. It would probably hurt your son is five ways.

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. 
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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.

Parents Advocating School Accountability
Edison Schools' San Francisco Rent Concession Sparks Hope Elsewhere
For-profit Edison Schools' new agreement to pay rent on a San Francisco Unified School District-owned site has given hope to York, Pa., school officials, who are engaged in their own heated dispute with Edison over rent.
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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.
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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?"
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"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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.

NCES
This brief NCES publication, "Statistics in Brief: Revenues and Expenditures for Public Elementary and Secondary Education: School Year 1998-99," contains basic revenue and expenditure data, by state, for public elementary and secondary education for school year 1998-99. It contains state level data on revenues by source and expenditures by function, including expenditures per pupil.

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.

Reworking the Student Departure Puzzle
John Thelin, Amy E. Wells  | 2002

Schooling the Symbolic Animal: Social and Cultural Dimensions of Education
Edmund T. Hamann | 2002

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.
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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.  
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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.
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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. 
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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. 
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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.
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  Previous Commentaries and Reports