NewsTrust - Education Reform - Most Recent Stories: News

Students Continue to Protest California Tuition Increases

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Malia Wollan, Tamar Lewin - Nov. 20 (News Report) - The day after the University of California Board of Regents approved a 32 percent increase in fees that are the equivalent of tuition, protests continued on several campuses, with students occupying buildings at Santa Cruz and Berkeley. On the Berkeley campus, at least 40 students took over a classroom building, Wheeler Hall, barricading themselves on the second floor. Hundreds of students surrounded the building, huddled under umbrellas, tarps and plastic, chanting slogans like: “Fee hike! We strike!”

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From North Carolina, a model of how to transform education

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Oct. 16 (News Analysis) - In small numbers, in an ordered environment, these poor children can quickly be brought up to the level of the rest, and indeed exceed them in many cases. But when they form the majority of a school's pupils, the teachers can't cope, discipline breaks down, and learning stops. A school for poor children soon becomes a poor school.

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College for $99 a Month

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Kevin Carey - Oct. 05 (Special Report) - Colleges are caught in the same kind of debt-fueled price spiral that just blew up the real estate market. They’re also in the information business in a time when technology is driving down the cost of selling information to record, destabilizing lows.

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Must-know figures could change for Texas students

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By April Castro - Sep. 16 (News Report) - Does civil rights activist Cesar Chavez belong alongside Benjamin Franklin as an example of a model American citizen? Should Texas schoolchildren be required to identify Rush Limbaugh? How big a place does the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall — most famous for his victory in integrating the nation's schools — deserve in the history books? The conservative-dominated Texas State Board of Education debates changes beginning Thursday to the social studies curriculum of the state's 4.6 million K-12 students, and both conservatives and liberals say the other is attempting to rewrite history

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Dream of a Common Language. Sueño de un Idioma Común

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Texas Monthly - By Nate Blakeslee - Aug. 24 (Special Report) - ... the dual language experiment has been a success by any measure. By the sixth grade, kids in the program—regardless of which language they spoke when they first enrolled—are outscoring native English speakers on the TAKS tests. They can also read, write, and speak Spanish at a sophisticated level.

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Obama Uses Funding to Pressure Education Establishment for Change

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Michael Shear, Nick Anderson - Jul. 23 (News) - The pressure campaign has been underway for months as Education Secretary Arne Duncan travels the country delivering a blunt message to state officials who have resisted change for decades: Embrace reform or risk being shut out.

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Chips in official IDs raise privacy fears

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Todd Lewan - Jul. 11 (Poll) - -- Climbing into his Volvo, outfitted with a Matrics antenna and a Motorola reader he’d bought on eBay for $190, Chris Paget cruised the streets of San Francisco with this objective: To read the identity cards of strangers, wirelessly, without ever leaving his car.

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Vietnam War Architect Robert McNamara Dies at 93

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Howard Zinn, Marilyn Young, onathan Schell, Amy Goodman - Jul. 07 (News Analysis) - Over half a million Americans went to war on his watch, a war that ultimately killed over 58,000 American soldiers and at least 3 million Vietnamese. ... Less well-known is McNamara’s key involvement in the firebombing of 67 japanese cities shortly before the end of World War II that destroyed 50 to 90 percent of the cities. He described the bombing operations he analyzed under the general Curtis Lemay in a 2003 documentary by Errol Morris, “The Fog of War.” In a single night on March 10th, 1945, he told Morris, quote, “We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo—men, women, and children.”

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Harvard to Endow Chair in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Jun. 04 (News Report) - Harvard University will endow a visiting professorship in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies, a position that, it believes, will be the first endowed, named chair in the subject at an American college.

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Colleges Weighing 3-Year Degrees to Save Undergrads Time, Money

Fri, 22 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Valerie Strauss - May. 22 (News Report) - The four-year bachelor's degree has been the model in the United States since the first universities began operating before the American Revolution. Four-year degrees were designed in large part to provide a broad-based education that teaches young people to analyze and think critically, considered vital preparation to participate in the civic life of American democracy. The three-year degree is the common model at the University of Cambridge and Oxford University in England, and some U.S. schools have begun experimenting with the idea. To cram four years of study into three, some will require summer work, others will shave course lengths and some might cut the number of credit hours required.

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Teaching in the Downturn

Mon, 11 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

tolerance.org - By Jennifer Holladay & Tim Lockette - May. 11 (Special Report) - Few of today's teachers can remember an economic situation quite like the one we now face. To find analogies for the collapse of the housing bubble and the subsequent credit crisis, we have to search not our memories but our textbooks. The Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath suddenly make more sense now. Generations of students have groaned at the task of memorizing acronyms like FDIC or FNMA: now they seem to leap off the pages of the history books. What will happen next? Will the economy bounce back, or will a wave of foreclosures create an invisible "Dust Bowl," uprooting hundreds of thousands of people? And how do we teach in this environment? To help our readers navigate these uncharted waters, we called in the experts. In the interviews below, social critic Meizhu Lui offers her take on where the crisis may lead us, and psychologist Melanie Killen talks about how to help your students cope in a time when the economic news is grim.

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Crossing the Gap

Mon, 11 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

tolerance.org - By Tim Lockette - May. 11 (Special Report) - Brandon Saunders has trouble believing there are places like New Trier High School — a public school with an ivy-walled, university-like campus, with gyms for almost every sport, a multi-room college counseling center, and bright-eyed teachers planning their lessons in cubicle-like offices as up-to-date as any in corporate America. "It's immaculate," he said after seeing New Trier's campus. "I was blown away." Amanda Cohen has trouble believing there are schools where kids have to share textbooks, where parents are asked to supply toilet paper, and where no one comes to fix a bathroom without a door.

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Should the mayor take over Houston schools?

Sun, 10 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Houston Chronicle - By Ericka Mellon - May. 10 (Special Report) - As the Houston school board searches for a superintendent, a national movement is growing to yield that power — and more — to local mayors or boards they appoint. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan sent shock waves through public school systems this year when, shortly after taking office, he urged mayors to take over struggling urban districts. “At the end of my tenure, if only seven mayors are in control, I think I will have failed,” said Duncan, former CEO of the Chicago school district, which has been under the mayor’s power since 1995.

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In New York City, New Teachers Need Not Apply

Sun, 10 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Javier C. Hernandez - May. 10 (Special Report) - Larissa Patel dreamed of teaching English at a Brooklyn public school this fall, motivated by a desire to help low-income children. But instead, on Friday, Ms. Patel spent the day filling out applications for 30 private school jobs. Ms. Patel’s abrupt change in plans was precipitated by a new citywide ban on hiring teachers from outside the school system.

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Why do millions of Americans struggle with reading and writing?

Sat, 09 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo - May. 09 (Special Report) - For the first time, a detailed portrait of America's least literate adults is emerging. About 30 million people – 14 percent of the US population 16 and older – have trouble with basic reading and writing. Correlating factors that were explored in a new government report include poverty, ethnicity, native language background, and disabilities. Of these 30 million people, 7 million are considered "nonliterate" in English because their reading abilities are so low. When shown the label for an over-the-counter drug, for instance, many in this subgroup cannot read the word "adult" or a sentence explaining what to do in the event of an overdose.

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Arne Duncan, golden boy of education | The golden boy and the blob

Sat, 09 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - May. 09 (Special Report) - IT IS hard to find anybody with a bad word to say about Arne Duncan, Barack Obama’s young education secretary. Margaret Spellings, his predecessor in the Bush administration, calls him “a visionary leader and fellow reformer”. During his confirmation hearings Lamar Alexander, a senator from Tennessee and himself a former education secretary, sounded more like a lovesick schoolgirl than a member of the opposition party: “I think you’re the best.” Enthusiastic without being over-the-top, pragmatic without being a pushover, he is also the perfect embodiment of mens sana in corpore sano—tall and lean, clean-cut and athletic, a Thomas Arnold for the digital age.

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Education secretary: Stimulus money is for next two years

Sat, 09 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Howard Blume - May. 09 (News Report) - The top education official in the Obama administration says that federal stimulus dollars for school districts are meant to be spent over two years, which aligns with the position of L.A. school officials in their ongoing political war with employee unions over looming layoffs. The comment by Education Secretary Arne Duncan is significant because unions have been campaigning for district officials to spend as much of the stimulus money as needed to save jobs now. District officials have countered that employees must agree to conditional salary concessions if all jobs are to be saved.

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Budget Outlines Funding for Teacher Merit Pay Programs

Fri, 08 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Maria Gold - May. 08 (Special Report) - President Obama is seeking to add hundreds of millions for teacher merit pay programs, an investment in a reform that has often drawn criticism from teachers unions. Even as education officials have eliminated 12 programs they say are not proven to benefit students -- a savings of $550 million -- the department is seeking $517 million for performance pay grants, up from $97 million in last year's budget. In addition, the stimulus law included an additional $200 million for such programs.

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New Orleans Charter Schools Produce Mixed Results