Is the era of teaching to the test nearing an end?
One more state received a waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind Act requirements this week, and the debate about what the waivers will mean for education policy continues. New Mexico, which was left waiting for a verdict on its application after an announcement that 10 other states had been granted waivers last week, [...]
Obama’s new teacher plan: Not so new?
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan made his case yesterday for the $5 billion that he and President Barack Obama want Congress to put toward a new grant competition to overhaul the teaching profession. The program would follow the mold of the administration’s $4.35-billion Race to the Top competition in form and, it seems to a [...]
Ten states let off the No Child Left Behind hook
U.S. President Barack Obama announced today that he is letting 10 states off the hook for meeting requirements in the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The law, passed in 2001 with bipartisan support under President George W. Bush, called for all students to reach proficiency in English and math by 2014, a goal that [...]
Are school choice and integration the secret ingredients to lowering crime?
Young African-American men at risk of committing crimes were much less likely to do so when they attended higher-performing schools outside their neighborhoods, according to a study published today in Education Next. The study, by David Deming, a professor of education and economics at Harvard, looked at students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, the North Carolina school district where [...]
Obama is “incentivizing”—not regulating—universities, ed secretary says
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said today that the Obama administration isn’t trying to regulate university tuition by linking federal funding to the rate at which college costs increase. In his state-of-the-union address on January 24th, President Barack Obama proposed that federal financial aid be tied to the pace of tuition increases. Institutions whose tuition [...]
What will happen with education in the 2012 presidential election?
As the Republican presidential primary rolls on to Nevada, many are already looking toward the general election, discussing what the candidates will have to do to win the White House. A panel held on Wednesday, February 1st, at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning public-policy think tank in Washington, D.C., discussed what role education will [...]
Oklahoma considers dropping high-school exit exams
Oklahoma’s landmark 2005 legislation, which mandated that all high-school students pass exams to be eligible for graduation, may be killed off before it even takes effect. The law, Achieving Classroom Excellence, requires seniors to pass sophomore-level tests in English, algebra and two other subjects—biology, algebra II, geometry, U.S. history or junior-level English—starting with the Class [...]
Charter-school enrollment: Two million students and counting
The charter-school movement reached a milestone this week: Charter schools, which are publicly funded but typically privately managed, now educate more than two million students, up from around 1.8 million last year. Despite the heated debate over charter schools, the number is still relatively small considering the size of the K-12 student population in U.S. [...]
Should schools alone be held accountable for student achievement?
What if schools didn’t have to work alone to improve student achievement? That was the question we asked in a recent article about the miserable state of public education in Camden, N.J., one of the poorest cities in the country. Now, a study out today by Education Sector, a Washington, D.C.-based education policy think tank, delves further into [...]
Kindergartners at the keyboard [podcast]
In October, Hechinger Report writer Jill Barshay reported on computer instruction in kindergarten classrooms in a story that ran in Education Week and newspapers across the country. Last week she was a guest on American RadioWorks, where she spoke with executive editor and host Stephen Smith about the story.
