Tag Archives: accountability
LA Times Questions Common Core
Today the Times editorial board speaks out regarding the consequences of pushing national standards when the schools simply are not ready. The new Common Core State Standards are supposed to be implemented in schools in 2014. But the state is far from ready. . . .Though the Obama administration couldn’t legally force new standards onContinue Reading
Stossel on K-12 Education Spending
This past weekend, John Stossel compared the increase of K-12 students to the increase of personnel in schools during 1950 till 2009. The show aired on Fox Business. The education BLOB— that immovable jelly-like ball of teachers’ and janitors’ unions, the school board bureaucrats, PTAs, etc.—just keeps growing. As the number of students increased 96%,Continue Reading
Shameless Diane Ravitch: Newtown teachers belonged to a union, had tenure
Education pundit Diane Ravitch does her best to exploit the Newtown shootings to advance her own political agenda. And, no, we are not talking about a gun control agenda. In a blog post, Ravitch writes, Every one of the [Sandy Hook] teachers was a career educator. Every one was doing exactly what she wanted toContinue Reading
ACT scores: Pretty much the same as last year
Charter schools outperform districts again
Once again, the average performance composite score of charter schools beat the district school average. The performance composite is the percentage of students’ scores in each school that were at or above grade level on state end-of-grade and end-of-course tests. Admittedly, I am not a fan of comparing average performance composites, but critics of charterContinue Reading
Low-income, black, and Hispanic students make gains on state tests
By now, I am sure you heard the news. North Carolina’s graduation rate was 80.2 percent, a 2.3 percent increase from a year ago. There was a 1.9 percent decrease in the percentage of students that met or exceeded growth expectations on state tests. Here are a few interesting findings: I examined the End ofContinue Reading
REINS Act: Restoring Accountability to Lawmaking
Yesterday, the United States House passed the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act (REINS Act, H.R. 10)) by a 241-184 vote. No Republican voted against the bill, while only 4 democrats voted for it. Congress often delegates significant power to government agencies. As a result, these agencies have an excessive amount ofContinue Reading
2011 TUDA: CMS outperforms districts, nation
The federal education officials who brought you the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) released the 2011 Trial Urban District Assessments (TUDA) results this morning. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) is the only participating district in the state. The study concluded that CMS scored higher than most (participating) urban districts on most NAEP fourth- and eighth-grade readingContinue Reading