News Archives – November 2007
November 29, 2007 – U.S. News & World Report – “America’s Best High Schools”
There are more than 18,000 public high schools in the United States. What if you could take a snapshot of each one and capture, at a particular moment, what kinds of students were enrolled there and the caliber of the education provided them? If you were to collect these individual snapshots into one huge national yearbook, which high school would be chosen as "Most Likely to Succeed," meaning that it set the best example of how to prepare students to achieve their post-graduation goals?
November 16, 2007 – New York Times – “Shaping the System That Grades City Schools”
JAMES S. Liebman is prone to attempting big-picture corrections, be it by challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty before the Supreme Court or, as happened this month in New York City, by putting the administrative screws to public schools that fail to educate their students.
November 13, 2007 – San Francisco Chronicle – “California school leaders debate racial achievement gap”
Education leaders have accepted for too long the notion that poverty is the main cause of underachievement for certain groups of students and that there is little schools could do about it, the state schools superintendent said Tuesday. That attitude, and the assumptions that underlie it, is no longer acceptable in California, Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell told thousands of educators who convened for a two-day summit. O'Connell called the meeting to address the achievement gap between different groups of students, primarily black and Hispanic students and their white and Asian counterparts. He said greater focus on rigorous curriculum has boosted achievement for many students.
November 8, 2007 – The Economist – “The great experiment”
The 220 children are called scholars, not students, at the Excellence charter school in Brooklyn's impoverished Bedford-Stuyvesant district. To promote the highest expectations, the scholars—who are all boys, mostly black and more than half of whom get free or subsidized school lunches—are encouraged to think beyond school, to university. The charter school is an independently run public school that is bringing accountability and competition to New York City's struggling schools.
November 5, 2007 – U.S. News & World Report – “The Education Secretary Talks about NCLB”
As the U.S. secretary of education, Margaret Spellings oversees the implementation of the No Child Left Behind law. A believer that "what gets measured gets done," she remains confident that schools can bring all students to grade-level proficiency by 2014 but says progress is not being made fast enough.
November 3, 2007 – The Register-Herald, North Carolina – “NCLB tests system”
Each school in the country has been affected by the [No Child Left Behind Act], designed to increase the standards of accountability for states, school districts and schools to ensure that “no child is left behind.” Raleigh County Superintendent Dr. Charlotte Hutchens says that one of the better aspects of NCLB… is the emphasis it places on individual children.
November 2, 2007 – Christian Science Monitor – “Margaret Spellings: 'No Child Left Behind' faces political head winds”
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is tempered in her confidence that Congress will reauthorize the No Child Left Behind law. "I have worked hard to get a reauthorization," she told a Monitor-sponsored breakfast with reporters on Thursday. "The bad news is that we are attempting to do it ... on the eve of a presidential election." Whether or not Congress changes the legislation through reauthorization, it will remain on the books, Secretary Spellings said.
November 1, 2007 – St. Petersburg Times – “No Child Left Behind offers help”
The federally mandated No Child Left Behind Act requires that students must make adequate yearly progress. That's not so easy to determine, said Beth Varn, the Hernando County School District's No Child Left Behind choice specialist. "The intent of the law is that everyone is receiving fair and equal, quality education," she said.
