Social promotion doesn’t work, writes Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College at Columbia, in the New York Times. Neither does flunking students. “Research on the subject is clear: neither social promotion nor holding back students works,” Levine writes. “Leaving students back increases their dropout rate, while using the same methods […]
Archive for May, 2008
Chester Finn and Rick Hess have published a book, Leaving No Child Behind?, and NCLB analysis in Public Interest and Phi Delta Kappan. I can’t get any of this online, but here’s a response by Eduwonk:.
Finn and Hess note that NCLB abandoned “time honored” school choice principles and despite many thoughtful recommendations for […]
Kindergarteners now spend a full day in school, with no naptime, reports the Baltimore Sun.
As educators strive to prepare children early so they can achieve later, naptime — the envy of some adults — has evolved into a period of quiet activities in the full-day kindergarten programs offered in Anne Arundel, Howard and other Maryland […]
In The Mad, Mad World of Textbook Adoption, Chester Finn and Diane Ravitch argue for local control, rather than having textbooks chosen at the state level.
Textbook adoption is a fundamentally flawed process: it distorts the market, entices extremist groups to hijack the curriculum, and papers the land with mediocre instructional materials.
We do not believe […]
Girls “account for 29 percent of all juvenile arrests, up from 23 percent in 1990,” the Christian Science Monitor reports. But the arrest statistics may be misleading. “Status offenses” like truancy and running away are more likely to be labeled as crimes, and schools’ zero-tolerance policies are “upcriming” minor offenses. In addition, “Awareness is […]
Graduation rates are higher for Milwaukee students using vouchers to attend private schools, concludes a Manhattan Institute study. In 2003, voucher students had a 64 percent graduation rate, compared to a 36 percent for Milwaukee public high schools and 41 percent for “six academically selective public high schools, whose students are likely to be […]
Gainesville Elementary is a 90-90-90 school, writes Samuel Freedman in the New York Times. Ninety percent of the students are non-white, 90 percent are poor and 90 percent meet Georgia’s state standards. All students who are behind “stay for an extra three hours of class each weekday and seven hours on Saturday.” […]
Via Number 2 Pencil, here’s Teresa Heinz Kerry’s take on education policy:
In terms of education, Heinz Kerry blasted Bush’s No Child Left Behind reform measure as an unfunded mandate that has increased bureaucracy.
Schools have been hampered rather than helped by its mandatory assessments, she said, and some extracurricular activities are falling by the wayside […]
Respect the Box.
When a seven-year-old Florida boy hit a classmate, a teacher and the principal and scratched a school staffer, the second grader was arrested, booked, fingerprinted and held briefly at a juvenile justice facility.
Expelling the boy, who’s now on house arrest, makes sense. Swearing out an arrest warrant on a seven-year-old? That seems […]
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