“Schools across the United States soon could have online access to a vast amount of educational content from public television archives to help raise student achievement, if a new bill called the Ready to Compete Act (H.R. 6856) is enacted. Co-sponsored by Reps. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., and Ray LaHood, R-Ill., the bill would reauthorize two […]
“Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) sent letters to administrators at twenty public colleges and universities in New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania warning them to abandon their speech codes in light of the recent Third Circuit decision overturning Temple University’s unconstitutional code. All of the colleges FIRE contacted are rated as ‘red […]
“St. Louis is looking for its eighth school superintendent since 2003. Kansas City is on its 25th superintendent in 39 years. Despite good salaries and plenty of perks, a recent study found that the average urban superintendent nationwide stays on the job only about three years — which educators say isn’t enough time to enact […]
“A last-minute vote in the closing hours of the Arizona Legislature’s spring meeting stripped funding from the state’s two-year-old voucher programs for disabled and foster students, leaving roughly 350 children and their parents scrambling in search of schooling alternatives before classes begin this fall. On May 15 a state appellate court had declared the two […]
“A Montgomery County judge has rejected a state effort to close a poor-performing charter school under Ohio’s charitable trust law. Common Pleas Judge Michael Tucker dismissed the case, ruling that the attorney general has no authority to oversee New Choices Community School, a tax-funded, privately operated school in Dayton.” (09/30/08)
“It’s happened again. September. Back to school. Even though we’re homeschooling, we can feel it in the air. Time to get going. We start planning, organizing, preparing. Whether we’re new or experienced homeschoolers, we can easily feel overwhelmed. How are we going to get everything done? How do we know the kids are learning enough […]
“Educators call them ‘teachable moments.’ Circumstances accidentally cross paths, creating the opportunity or need to learn about a certain topic. We might have witnessed such a moment this spring on a national level after Fox News aired short video excerpts from sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Senator Barack Obama’s minister and friend. Right-wing talk-show […]
“The traditional government-operated school is not the only way to educate children, and it has clearly proven it is not the best way. Charter schools are one of the newer alternatives to traditional public schools–they are publicly funded schools with private boards often staffed by idealistic members of the communities they serve. They run on […]
“We were proud to serve with Jim Nehring and our colleagues on Gov. Patrick’s Readiness Project MCAS subcommittee (’MCAS bashers hiding from truth,’ Sept. 24). We agreed that it’s past time to return to a goal of the 1993 Education Reform law, a comprehensive system employing a variety of assessment mechanisms that will drive high-quality […]
“American citizens with scant economic and political power, non-whites last hired and first fired in the labor market, are often easy pickings for charter school operators. These entrepreneurs do not proceed alone as they compete in the mythical marketplace of free competition between buyers and sellers of goods and services. To the contrary, charter school […]
