Acapulco Guerrero News Center
Looking at the Dropout Issue
July 5, 2008Some of the most troubling questions about schools, such as what causes dropouts, have few clear answers because there is so little research. And the reason that data is lacking, at least in part, is that educators who would otherwise demand it are too busy with more even pressing issues, such as improving teaching and raising low student achievement.
The Nation's Most Elite Public Schools
July 5, 2008Each year when Newsweek publishes its list of America's Top High Schools, I always know what question the largest number of e-mails will ask. To paraphrase, and somewhat soften, the usual language: "Where the devil is my nationally famous magnet school on your dumb list?"
Raising Minority Graduation Rates in College
July 5, 2008The Catholic University and Trinity Washington University are well-regarded institutions located next to each other in a verdant section of northeast Washington. Yet there is a huge gap between them in the relative graduation rates of their black and white students.
Is AP Good for Everyone?
July 5, 2008 I am no match for Chester E. Finn Jr. in a debate. The president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and author of "Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik" (Princeton University Press) is feared by many ideological adversaries for his sharp wit and inexhaustible erudition. But I am taking him on anyway in this column because he suggested recently in his own weekly Gadfly column that I was promoting Advanced Placement courses for all students, even those unable or unwilling to handle their difficulties. I thought this would also be a good way to explore the limits of the movement to make high schools more challenging, a very lively issue in our highest-performing schools. Here we go:
Community College Transfer Mess
July 5, 2008Like many community college students, Josie Showers saw her classes at Jefferson Community and Technical College in Louisville as the first step toward a four-year degree. She was among the nearly half of American students who start college in two-year community schools. They are told if they work hard, their state's four-year colleges will be happy to accept them as transfers and cheer them on to graduation. But Showers, like many others, discovered those four-year schools are not as helpful as she had been led to believe.
Few Solutions In Book on Charters
July 5, 2008Journalists, particularly me, tend to get excited about charter schools, the independently run public schools that have produced -- at least in some cases -- major improvements in achievement for children from low-income families. The charter educators I write about are often young, energetic, witty, noble and pretty much irresistible. But their charter schools, which use tax dollars with little oversight, are relatively new and untried. Like all experiments, they could easily fizzle.
Few Solutions In Book on Charters
July 5, 2008Journalists, particularly me, tend to get excited about charter schools, the independently run public schools that have produced -- at least in some cases -- major improvements in achievement for children from low-income families. The charter educators I write about are often young, energetic, witty, noble and pretty much irresistible. But their charter schools, which use tax dollars with little oversight, are relatively new and untried. Like all experiments, they could easily fizzle.
Few Solutions In Book on Charters
July 5, 2008 Journalists, particularly me, tend to get excited about charter schools, the independently run public schools that have produced -- at least in some cases -- major improvements in achievement for children from low-income families. The charter educators I write about are often young, energetic, witty, noble and pretty much irresistible. But their charter schools, which use tax dollars with little oversight, are relatively new and untried. Like all experiments, they could easily fizzle.
Insiders Report on the Challenge Index
July 5, 2008This week, Newsweek magazine and its Web site Newsweek.com unveil this year's Top High Schools list, based on a rating system I invented a decade ago called the Challenge Index. The index ranks schools based on college-level course participation, adding up the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and other college-level tests in a given year for a given school, and dividing that total by its number of graduating seniors.
Take That AP Test or Flunk
July 5, 2008J. David Goodman's story in the New York Times last week about the new Advanced Placement policy at two high schools in New Jersey at first made me cringe.
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