The New Education Market
Examining the early responses of public schools to competition
Examining the early responses of public schools to competition
Credible Cassandras
This time, perhaps, the sky is falling
High-school graduation rates are slipping? Can this be? Or is Chicken Little at it again? After rising for more than 100 years, reports Duncan Chaplin in our lead feature “Tassels on the Cheap,” graduation rates started to slip during the 1970s. By the turn of the century, the graduation rate had dropped 7 percentage points [...]
Let’s Not Play Favorites
Religion, civic values, and public education
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the city of Cleveland’s school voucher program constitutional because it took a neutral stance toward religion. Both religious and secular schooling options were available to parents. Now the political and legal struggle shifts to the states, where opponents of vouchers are pinning their hopes on the so-called Blaine [...]
The More You Have…
Fiscal troubles plague the public schools
Fiscal troubles plague the public schools
Tough Love
New evidence that tough-grading teachers elicit better student performance
The value of high grading standards
What Mandates?
It’s been said, more than once, that the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is a mandate that the federal government has failed to fund. Not true, in either respect. The law is neither unfunded nor, with one exception, much of a mandate.
It’s been said, more than once, that the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is a mandate that the federal government has failed to fund. Not true, in either respect. The law is neither unfunded nor, with one exception, much of a mandate.
The Brown Irony
Racial progress eventually came to pass—everywhere but in public schools
Racial progress eventually came to pass—everywhere but in public schools
Paying Teachers Properly
That the uniform salary “schedule” for teachers is obsolete and dysfunctional is a truth widely accepted but rarely challenged.
That the uniform salary “schedule” for teachers is obsolete and dysfunctional is a truth widely accepted but rarely challenged.
The Children Left Behind
NCLB is a Giant Step Forward—but a Mid-course Correction is Needed
Now it is certain, on its third anniversary, that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is a monumental achievement. The accountability provisions of the law shine a bright light on the performance of schools across the nation, forcing many of them to attend to long-ignored problems. But new evidence confirms what was known when the law [...]
A Tribute to John Walton
At the edge of a fault line between two tectonic plates, the Grand Teton towers some five thousand feet over Jackson Hole below. There, near his beloved family home, John Walton, a risk-taker of the kind seldom witnessed within the world of large-scale philanthropy, died tragically on June 27, 2005, while flying a small, experimental [...]
