Education Next articles from January 2003

Education Next archives from January 2003

The urban education dragon: can the next generation of superintendents tame big-city schools? (From the Editors).
January 1, 2003... Few urban school superintendents remain in place for long nowadays. According to the Council of the Great City Schools, they last an average of 2.5 years. Like mythological children sent to appease the ravening monster, the chief education...

Correspondence.(letters concerning standards of GED testing, educational accountability)(General Educational Development tests)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2003... Testing the GED In his article on the high-school graduation rate ("Tassels on the Cheap, Feature, Fall 2002), Duncan Chaplin implies that the General Educational Development (GED) tests represent a lower academic hurdle than graduating...

Charters beset: new obstacles to continuing growth. (Forum).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... IN ONLY A DECADE, charter schools have grown from just a notion to some 2,700 schools across the nation. They range from small independent schools, often emanating from visionary teachers and parents, to franchise schools run by major education...

Friendly competition: sleek education management firms are a vital component of the charter school movement, but innovation is more likely from the visionaries who create unique, grassroots charters. (Forum).
January 1, 2003... VERYONE HAS READ THE UBIQUITOUS FEATURE STORY about a charter school--Jane and John Q. Public and their friends, sitting around somebody's kitchen table, dream up a different kind of school for their kids. Putting in hours of sweat equity,...

Yellow flag: the charter school movement will need to overcome a raft of political obstacles and high-profile scandals. (Forum).
January 1, 2003... SINCE 1991, 40 STATES HAVE ENACTED LAWS ALLOWING FOR THE CREation of charter schools--independent public schools of choice that are freed from many regulations but accountable for their results. There are now 2,700 schools that serve some...

Special needs: how to bring accountability to special education? (Forum).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... Special education began as a movement to protect the civil rights of children with disabilities. Ensuring that they had access to educational opportunities was the key issue. The 1975 legislation thus mandated that disabled children were to be...

Sisyphean tasks: the reams of paperwork that currently serve as special education's accountability" system distract from the practice of teaching and learning. It is time to focus on results. (Forum).(focus on special education in the Baltimore, Maryland public school system)
January 1, 2003... In a recent report for the Abell Foundation, Kalman R. Hettleman documented the troubled history of special education in the Baltimore public school system. He attributed the failure to "the compliance maze" that special education teachers and...

Reaching the ideal: special education has its problems, but they mainly follow from the failure of schools to comply fully with the law. (Forum).
January 1, 2003... THE ACCOUNTABILITY movement has been gathering steam for more than a decade now, so it was perhaps only a matter of rime before reformers began trying to apply the standards-and-testing template to special education. Patrick Wolf (see...

Political educator: Paul Vallas became the nation's most sought-after superintendent by bringing order and energy to Chicago's moribund school system. (Feature).
January 1, 2003... A STEADY TRICKLE OF WELL-WISHERS APPROACH FORMER CHICAGO schools superintendent Paul Vallas during a quiet morning at Petro's, the Greek-run downtown coffee shop where Vallas is holding forth. Some congratulate him, some thank him for putting...

The big stick: school reform in Chicago depended on setting standards and promoting systemwide improvement. (Feature).
January 1, 2003... IN THE 1980s, site-based management was one of the hottest theories in education. The idea was to drive budget authority and decision-making power down to the school level, allowing those in the trenches to respond to local needs and promoting...

The Philadelphia experiment: the story behind the Philadelphia school district's unprecedented move to turn 20 schools over to for-profit operator Edison Schools. (Feature).
January 1, 2003... GWENCAROL HOLMES, A TALL, SLENDER KANSAN, suppressed a smile whenever angry Philadelphians attacked the track record of her company, Edison Schools. Edison, the New York--based for-profit school management firm, was seen by many in the nation's...

Choice & freedom: legendary economist Milton Friedman reflects on the idea be spawned half a century ago. (Feature).(Interview)
January 1, 2003... NOBEL LAUREATE ECONOMIST MILTON FRIEDMAN WAS AMONG THE FIRST (John Stuart Mill made a similar proposal 100 years earlier) to propose that the financing of education be separated from the administration of schools, the core idea behind school...

Fanatical secularism: many educators see themselves as called to emancipate their students--a mission that can leave students imprisoned intellectually. (Feature).
January 1, 2003... THE SUPREME COURT'S MAJORITY opinion in the Cleveland voucher case, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, was of course the most newsworthy aspect of the decision, but the dissents were no less revealing. In about 500 words, Justice Stevens managed to use...

High stakes in Chicago: did Chicago's rising test scores reflect genuine academic improvement? (Research).
January 1, 2003... AS THE FIRST LARGE URBAN SCHOOL DISTRICT TO INTRODUCE a comprehensive accountability system, Chicago provides an exceptional case study of the effects of high-stakes testing--a reform strategy that will become omnipresent as the No Child Left...

The human capital century: U.S. schools led the world during much of the 20th century. Will they continue to do so? (Research).
January 1, 2003... The 20th century became the human-capital century. No nation today--no matter how poor--can afford not to educate its youth at the secondary-school level and beyond. Yet at the start of the 20th century even the world's richest...

Lobbying in disguise: the American Federation of Teachers "studies" charter schools. (Check the Facts).
January 1, 2003... Do Charter Schools Measure Up? The Charter School Experiment After 10 Years American Federation of Teachers, 2002. Teacher unions are pulled in different directions. On the one hand, many of their staffers have devoted their lives to...

Investment planning: the role of resources in education. (Book Review).(Education Matters: Selected Essays)(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... Education Matters: Selected Essays Edward Elgar Publishing, 2001, $120; 512 pages by Alan B. Krueger Two opposing camps dominate contemporary discussions of how to improve America's schools. One identifies as the central problem...

Much ado about something: teaching students how to read the classics. (Education Matters to Me).
January 1, 2003... Read the best books first, or you may not nave a chance to react them at alt, wrote Henry David Thoreau. Today most students, save those in honors English or elite private schools, readjust a few classics in high school. Their English teachers,...