The Courier-Journal reports the Jefferson County Board of Education is meeting tonight to consider whether they will expand the busing chaos in their elementary schools to the rest of the schools in Louisville. Apparently, board members have been getting an ear- and eye-full of comments about the messy elementary school plan and are unsure if…
Answer: Not well There is no question that the DuPont Manual High School in Louisville is Kentucky’s top performing school on the ACT college entrance test. Year after year, Manual’s kids have achieved the very best ACT Composite Score in Kentucky. That’s not so surprising, considering this highly selective magnet school pretty much gets to…
Charter schools are playing a key part The Christian Science Monitor recently ran a nice article about the recovery of New Orleans’ schools after Hurricane Katrina. Charter schools played a big role in the turn-around. Shannon Jones, executive director of the Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives at Tulane University in New Orleans, points out…
Not here! In California It’s no secret that former members of the US military can make outstanding teachers. After all, when the military isn’t fighting, it’s educating and training. Troops get exposed to some really creative instructional techniques that involve things like technology and higher order thinking skills (essential for battlefield survival) that our schools…
Improvement is unlikely if only the high schools get involved It looks like educators in the Bullitt County Public School District are catching on – strong performance on the ACT college entrance test is important for all students in the district, and real performance improvement will take involvement of all schools: elementary, middle and high…
WAVE-3 TV reports a federal judge has ruled Kentucky’s special interest election law that limited individuals’ contributions to candidates for local school board races is unconstitutional. The law restricted contributions from individuals to $100 while the union could give hundreds of thousands to its chosen candidates. That unbalanced rule gave the state’s teachers’ union a…
Education Week reports (subscription?) that the number of special education students in the United States has been declining recently. Several explanations are offered. Ed Week says: “About 80 percent of children who are classified as learning-disabled get the label because they’re struggling to read. So, scholars say, the dropping numbers could be linked to improvements…
It’s been a provision of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) since the bill was enacted back in late 2001. If a child attends a school that fails to make Adequate Yearly Progress for two years or more in a row, that child has the right to transfer to a better performing school. For years, parents…
One of our frequent, though often misinformed correspondents posted a sweeping comment on a recent blog that: “…charter schools don’t want anything to do with special education, homeless or migrant children.” That is another piece of uninformed, overly generalized opinion such as that frequently pushed by self-interested teachers’ union folks and their fellow travelers. Just…
Education Week reports (subscription) about an analysis by the International Association for K-12 Online Learning of the 16 finalist states’ Race to the Top proposals. Per the association, the winners were ready to use RTTT funds to offer more online opportunities. There were also plans in the winning states to replace mandatory seat time with…