Commonwealth Education Organization
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March, April, May 2009 Articles
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May 5, 2009 Reading Programs Found Ineffective "A federal study intended to provide insight on the effectiveness of programs for reading comprehension has found that three such programs had no positive impact, while a fourth had a negative effect on student achievement."
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What We Learn From School The Bitter Fruit of School ‘Reform’
"While it is gratifying to see gains in reading for 9- and 13-year olds since 1971, it is hard to find much cheer in the meagerness of their average gains after 35 years of investment by the federal government and our state governments in professional development of teachers, curriculum materials, and assessments in reading." |
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April 22, 2009 High school exit exam hinders female and non-white students "California's high school exit exam is keeping disproportionate numbers of girls and non-whites from graduating, even when they are just as capable as white boys, according to a study released Tuesday. It also found that the exam, which became a graduation requirement in 2007, has "had no positive effect on student achievement." " |
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April 14, 2009 Education, By Any Means "Our nation faces a...crossroads today regarding education reform. Ensuring that every American child receives equal access to high-quality education represents our last civil rights struggle. By any objective measure, the educational offerings we provide for our children, particularly children of color, do them a disservice." |
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April 10, 2009 D.C. Opportunity Scholarships Boost Reading Scores, Family Satisfaction |
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| April 08, 2009 Arne Duncan's Fundamental Dishonesty By David Harsanyi Secretary of Education Arne Duncan argues that we have an obligation to disregard politics to do whatever is "good for the kids." Well then, one wonders, why did his Department of Education bury a politically inconvenient study regarding education reform? And why, now that the evidence is public, does the administration continue to ignore it and allow reform to be killed? >>read more>> |
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| April 8, 2009 Obama Echoes Bush on Education Ideas By Erik W. Robelen President Barack Obama campaigned on a message of change, but when it comes to K-12 education, he appears to be walking in the policy footsteps of his recent predecessors, including George W. Bush. Mr. Obama is sounding themes of accountability based on standards and assessments. He’s delivering tough talk on teacher quality, including a call for performance-based pay. And he’s promoting an expanded charter school sector. >>read more>> |
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April 8, 2009 Common Sense for Mayoral Candidates: Education Policy A good public school system can be, and often is, an important factor in the overall
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Rhee Works on Overhaul Of Teacher Evaluations By Bill Turque
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Administration Proposes New Federal Education Spending Increases
This is the Army, Mrs. Jones! " “The Give Act” puts tow-headed school children and silver-haired seniors in the official uniform of the new State, and encompasses every walk of life in main-street America. It could be argued that ladies as sweet as their 4-H cherry pies or school children fed the pablum of being global citizens in American public schools are hardly in a position to know they will be part of (this) dream for a radically changed America. But no longer are the vanguards in place to teach them the difference." To read more, click here. March 16, 2009 Stimulus Spending on Schools is Inept Public Policy "States and school districts across the country are salivating at the prospect of receiving Federal money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, more commonly known as the stimulus bill. Pennsylvania districts are already being advised by the state Department of Education on how much they can expect and how it is to be used under Federal guidelines...... As we have shown in previous research, simply increasing education expenditures does not translate into better performing students." To learn more, click here. March 25, 2009 Report Cards Give Up A’s and B’s for 4s and 3s They are being called "standards-based report cards", and are part of a new way of grading across the country in a supposed push for rigorous academic standards. Many educators think they are wonderful and believe they help set high expectations. However, many parents believe they are confusing and are unhappy with them. To read more, click here. March 24, 2009 Auditor General Jack Wagner Offers Suggestions to Improve Safe School Legislation The PA Auditor General, Jack Wagner, testified early this year concerning Senate Bill 56. He sees it as a necessary step towards strengthening school violence reporting, coordination of efforts by school administrators and law enforcement, and on the overall safety of public school entities across the state. To read more, click here. Reading Test Dummies "We do not need to abandon either the principle of accountability or the fill-in-the-bubble format. Rather we need to move from teaching to the test to tests that are worth teaching to." To read more, click here. March 22, 2009 Some schools are cutting back on homework The homework wars continue. It has fallen in and out of favor for many years, with some parents arguing that children are being given too much and others supporting the need for practice at home. To read more, click here. March 22, 2009 PETA Turns Elementary School Into Circus "Reasonable people see why children should not be exploited to make an ideological point. Not to mention that it’s hardly appropriate to tell kids Dumbo is better off dead than living in captivity. But that willful ignorance is also unsurprising given PETA’s tendencies, which include prioritizing lab rats over pediatric AIDS research." To read more, click here. March 18, 2009 Math made fun: Singapore system hits Utah school "Singapore math moves slower, with the students spending more time on one concept, learning it completely before they move on to the next step. Traditional math goes through more topics in a school year but doesn't go as in depth on each topic.... Singapore math is based on problem solving. Students talk through what they do and tell stories based on the math problems." To read more, click here. March 10, 2009 President Obama Education Plan calls for performance-based pay, firing poorly performing teachers "President Obama declared Tuesday morning it's time to start 'rewarding excellence' in the classroom and called for performance-based pay for deserving teachers." To read more, click here. March 10, 2009 Related articles: No Picnic for Me Either "Obama hopes to change incentives so districts do the effective and hard things instead of the easy and mediocre things. The question is whether he has the courage to follow through." To read more, click here. March 13, 2009 Putting Some Straight Talk Into Obama's Education Speech This article takes a look at some of the ideas that President Obama mentioned in his education speech and the context behind the statements. To read more, click here. March 16, 2009 US Public Schools Teaching Children Pro-Islamic Propaganda This article discusses a study by Gary Tobin and Dennis Ybarra of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research cites hundreds of errors and distortions found in "28 of the most widely used social studies and history textbooks in the United States." To read more, click here. March 9, 2009 Degree of Difficulty "We now require too few of our high school students to read nonfiction books—another failure in setting an appropriate degree of difficulty—and we set the degree-of-difficulty level far too low when it comes to academic writing. We should consider giving up this destructive practice of holding the performance of our students to such a low standard, and one that disables too many of them for early success in higher education. Lots of our high school students can and will meet a higher standard, if we just offer it to them." To read more, click here. March 9, 2009 Single-sex classes raise hope, doubt "Hoping to quell unruly behavior and improve middle school students' grades, school leaders in Lawrence (Massachusetts) are turning to a throwback to the old days: separating the girls from the boys.But the school system could end up on shaky legal ground if it offers all-boys and all-girls classes without presenting a co-ed alternative to parents, according to the American Civil Liberties Union." To read more, click here. March 8, 2009 Pennsylvania school boards OK with revised graduation test plan "High-stakes graduation tests still have a lot of opponents, but the Pennsylvania School Boards Association is no longer among them now that some revisions to the proposal have been made." To read more, click here. March 5, 2009 Pennsylvania school boards want less government To read more, click here. March 4, 2009 Can we get to national standards, considering the pitfalls? Chester Finn of the Fordham Foundations has been a past supporter of national standards, but he seems to be having second thoughts on this issue. In this writing, he shares his seven accumulated worries about the development of national standards. To read more, click here. March 5, 2009 21st Century Skills Fadbusters "A broad, solid knowledge-based curriculum is square one for developing '21st Century Skills'. Inspired, creative teaching not wish fulfillment codified by squishy, ill-defined standards“gets us the rest of the way. That might not fit on a bumper sticker, but it might work." To read more, click here. February 25, 2009 Push for '21st-Century Skills' "In the K-12 classroom, the pursuit of 21st-century skills usually means that teachers emphasize technology, group work, and project-based learning. "In a project-based-learning unit, teachers are no longer the focal point of the classroom or the expounders of information," explains a recent Education Week article (1-7-09). "For the most part, students rely on their classmates' expertise, on experimentation, and on outside sources of information to solve the problem at hand." " To read more, click here. February 2009 Dividing boys, girls in school gains favor "The U.S. Department of Education noted in 2005 that the jury was still out on the effectiveness of same-gender classrooms, due to "a dearth of quality studies" on the topic. But a lack of data hasn't slowed the popularity of the approach, which has been triggered by recent research that suggests the brains of boys and girls develop differently at young ages." To read more, click here. February 24, 2009 Class Size in New York City Schools Rises, but the Impact Is Debated "....while state legislatures for decades have passed laws--and provided millions of dollars--to cap the size of classes, some academic researchers and education leaders say that small reductions in the number of students in a room often have little effect on their performance." To read more, click here. February 21, 2009 Kindergartners 'redshirted' to gain edge "A paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research by Harvard researchers David Deming and Susan Dynarski found that in 1968, 96 percent of 6-year-olds were enrolled in first grade or above. But by 2005, as a result of more parents delaying their kids' entry and more states changing the age at which a child must start school, the number dropped to 84 percent of 6-year-olds." To read more, click here. February 13, 2009 How Words Cast Their Spell "Spelling is a psychological, linguistic, and conceptual process involving knowledge of the alphabet, syllables, word meaning, and the history of words. Spelling, therefore, is a window on what a person knows about words. Learning about words and about the language will improve spelling skills." To read more, click here. Winter 2008/2009 Proposal to Consolidate School Districts is a Distraction "The proposal to reduce the number of school districts in the Commonwealth by 80 percent to cut expenses will undoubtedly meet with substantial resistance. Some of it based on valid argument, some not. But the important point is that the consolidation proposal is a distraction intended to prevent policy makers from dealing meaningfully with the costs of education and the extremely poor performance in many districts." To read more, click here. February 6, 2009 United Nations' threat: No more parental rights "A United Nations human rights treaty that could prohibit children from being spanked or homeschooled, ...and forbid parents from deciding their families' religion is on America's doorstep, a legal expert warns." To read more, click here. February 5, 2009 Study gives Pa. D+ for policies on keeping teachers "Pennsylvania's policies to identify and keep good teachers need to be reviewed, the National Council of Teacher Quality concluded in its annual report on retention policies. Pennsylvania, with a D+, was among the 35 states plus the District of Columbia to receive a D or F on teacher retention policies in the report that cited a need for retention bonuses and other financial benefits." To read more, click here. January 30, 2009 Scandalous behavior from the National Science Foundation Senator Grassley of the Senate Finance Committee has started an inquiry into the inner workings of the NSF after a report found NSF employees spending significant amounts of company time on smut sites and other questionable pursuits. " 'The semiannual report raises real questions about how the National Science Foundation manages its resources, and Congress ought to demand a full accounting before it gives the agency another $3 billion in the stimulus bill," Grassley said." To read more, click here. January 28, 2009 Key Questions for Arne Duncan, Nominee for Secretary for U.S. Department of Education Dan Lipps of the Heritage Foundation proposes five questions he'd like to ask the new Secretary of Education. He also lets us know the answers he would like to hear. To read more, click here. January 9, 2009 “Student-centered” Learning (or “Constructivism”) There are two major problems with the current mathematics education in America, according to author Laurie H. Rogers. These problems are “student centered” learning and insufficient practice of basic skills. Student centered learning (also known as “constructivism” or “discovery learning”) involves students working in pairs or groups with teachers acting as “facilitators” instead of instructing them. The students are encouraged to come up with their own ways of solving problems, basically attempting to “reinvent the wheel”. Avoiding the ecessary practicing to mastery is the second problem because too many people have labeled it as “drill and kill” and tried to eliminate it entirely from math class. To read more, click here. November 9, 2008 Universal Preschool Hasn't Delivered Results "Early education advocates want you to believe that the case for universal preschool is so airtight that raising any questions about it is an act of heresy. But there is a strong and growing body of literature showing that preschool produces virtually no lasting benefits for the majority of kids." To read more, click here. October 17, 2008 Universal Preschool A Silver Bullet for Education Reform or A Waste of Money? This 10-minute documentary on Reason.tv is hosted by Nick Gillespie and produced by Paul Feine and Roger M. Richards. To see video, click here.
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Commonwealth Education Organization . 3830 Saxonburg Blvd. Cheswick , Pa. 15024 . (412) 967-9691
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