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 September 29, 2006
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Headline Stories

Reading last: Spellings should resign!
Friday, September 29, 2006
The brouhaha over the federal Reading First program illustrates everything that's wrong with government today--not the alleged improprieties, but a twisted government culture that prioritizes "proper procedures" over actual results and that looks for scapegoats and fall-guys when the going gets tough.
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Escape Hatch for Incompetent Teachers Closed
Friday, September 29, 2006
Los Angeles Times
SACRAMENTO — In a rare defeat for teachers' unions, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill Thursday to make it easier for some principals to reject incompetent teachers.
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A bright spot for city's schools
Friday, September 29, 2006
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
Montessori students outperform traditionally taught students academically and socially, report finds
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State finds errors in high school graduation, dropout rates
Friday, September 29, 2006
Detroit News
Audit reveals various miscalculations from 2002 to 2004; some schools sent wrong data.
Graduation and dropout rates reported by Michigan's high schools are not always accurate, according to a state audit released Thursday.
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Utah schools suffer setback
Friday, September 29, 2006
Deseret News
School report cards under the federal No Child Left Behind law were released Thursday, and though achievement benchmarks remained the same, fewer schools scored up to par.
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Feud Over L.A. Mayor's Takeover of Schools Is Public Only
Friday, September 29, 2006
Los Angeles Times
Even as Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and school district officials prepare to wage war in court, senior aides on both sides are quietly laying the groundwork for a future partnership and collaborating on major initiatives, including a system to track dropouts.
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Panel to study how well state is running schools
Friday, September 29, 2006
Philadelphia Daily News
Mayor Street yesterday announced the formation of a task force to determine how well public schools have performed since they were taken over by the state for academic and financial reasons nearly five years ago.
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Additional Daily EducationNews..

Commentaries & Reports

Commentary: Secure Our Schools, Secure Our Borders
Friday, September 29, 2006
Michael F. Shaughnessy
Eastern New Mexico University 
Yesterday was a sad day. A student in Bailey, Colorado was killed by someone who probably had “emotional issues” or psychological problems or a psychiatric history. This information is not as yet forthcoming, but obviously a person who enters a school with a gun and takes six girls hostage has some sort of “issues”.
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NCLB DOES POOR JOB OF DISTINGUISHING GOOD SCHOOLS FROM INEFFECTIVE ONES; FLORIDA'S A+ PLAN BETTER AT ISOLATING LOW PERFORMERS
Friday, September 29, 2006
STANFORD -- The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act has proven to be less than satisfactory in measuring school quality in Florida schools. Florida’s own accountability system, however, which uses a more sophisticated A to F grading scale, is both more accurate and more successful at identifying the schools most in need of improvement, according to  a new study published in the fall issue of Hoover Institution’s journal Education Next.
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If Money's the Solution, That's the Problem
Friday, September 29, 2006
David W. Kirkpatrick Senior Education Fellow
U.S. Freedom Foundation
That was the title of an article by Al Knight in The Denver Post fifteen years ago tomorrow.  What was true then is still true today.  And if the past is indeed prologue, it will still be true fifteen years from now.
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Pre-K: Shaping the System That Shapes Children
Friday, September 29, 2006
Stephen Goldsmith
Rhonda Meyer
This year, states will add almost one billion additional education tax dollars to their budgets as politicians in more than twenty states consider moving toward a Universal Prekindergarten (UPK) system. Although a spirited debate has taken place over the advantages to children of a pre-K education, there has been little or no debate on how, rather than whether, to offer early-childhood education (ECE).
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Alert: Severe shortage of grown-ups
Friday, September 29, 2006
Mona Charen
Do you allow your pre-teen daughters to wear T-shirts with suggestive messages? Well, plenty of parents do.
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Universities: getting the private sector to ‘buy-in’
Friday, September 29, 2006
Sebastian De Brennan
Australian universities must do better in terms of their community engagement.
The article ''Unis keen to foster culture of donations'' (The Australian, August 30, 2006) is spot-on. Australia's universities are not good at asking the business sector for dollars.
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TEAM BUILDING AND COLLABORATION
Friday, September 29, 2006
Team building and collaboration are two of the most important components of an effective school. These are critical steps for any school working toward improvement. I have seen big initiatives, large grants, and schoolwide efforts that haven't achieved the results that were hoped for, and in some cases, the reason can be tied directly to a lack of buy-in and schoolwide collaboration.
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CROSS TRAINING
Friday, September 29, 2006
The arts often are sidelined these days in an educational landscape of soaring expenses and standardized exams. As school officials across the country take the red pen to their arts budgets, they generally reason, "How do we justify the time and expense of music, dance, or drawing when we have federal benchmarks to meet and little money to spend?"
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Congress Wants to Stripsearch Kids?
Friday, September 29, 2006
by Devvy Kidd
Last week the tyrants in the House of Representatives passed yet more unconstitutional legislation: an anti-drug and anti-weapon law which would mandate school districts formulate policies for searches - including strip searches, but would immunize teachers and staff against prosecution. Should the schools refuse to perform under this unconstitutional bill they would be denied unconstitutional federal funding.....
EdNews Community

For Non-Whites Only
Friday, September 29, 2006
By Terence J. Pell
When fifteen-year old Emily Smith applied to Virginia Commonwealth University’s Urban Journalism Workshop last April, she didn’t think her experience would become the basis for a new federal lawsuit designed to crack down on the illegal use of racial exclusions by colleges and universities.
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The death of student politics
Friday, September 29, 2006
Nicholas Crocker
Most students don’t have the time, energy or financial freedom to charge down Queen Street screaming fanatically about global warming.
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Data Proposals Threaten Education and Civil Rights Accountability
Friday, September 29, 2006
Chungmei Lee and Gary Orfield
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Commentaries continued..

 

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