Tag: Education
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Stimulus bill payoff to wrong education interests
The Wall Street Journal analyzes some of the earmarks in the stimulus bill, and finds that specific provisions for spending are going to be wasted — except that they payoff special interests:
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Few States, Including Kansas, Set World-Class Standards
The federal No Child Left Behind legislation sets the standard that all children should be proficient in reading and math by 2014. While a federal law, it’s left to the states to set the standard as to what proficiency means, and to test for it. As you might imagine, there is considerable variation between the…
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Kansas school funding: Can the education lobby be believed?
As the State of Kansas seeks to work its way out of a difficult budget shortfall, some groups aren’t willing to make the same sacrifice that is being asked of others. The biggest offender — both in terms of dollars and shrillness — is the public school lobby in Kansas.
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Is 65 Percent the Solution?
At the Kansas Education blog, a post titled Is 65 Percent the Solution? examines some of the arguments and policy considerations surrounding the popular proposal that schools must spend at least 65 percent of their funds in the classroom. Whatever that — “in the classroom” or on “instruction” — means. And that’s part of the…
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Performance Inflation in Kansas Schools?
USD 259, the Wichita public school district, claims 11 years of rising test scores. They’ve got the data (I think so, anyway) to prove it. In fact, the test scores are rising fairly rapidly in Wichita and across the state. See Wichita Test Scores Largely Mirror Kansas for some charts I prepared of test scores…
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Charter school students more likely to graduate high school
Jay P. Greene discusses a news study examining charter schools: The researchers look at whether attending a charter high school in Chicago and Florida increases the likelihood that students would graduate high school and go on to college. The short answer is that it does. … This study comes on the heels of positive results…
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Charter Schools Can Close the Education Gap
We don’t have these, to my knowledge, in USD 259, the Wichita public school district, and there are very few in Kansas. Across the country, however, charter schools are making a difference, particularly in addressing the needs of urban and high-poverty students. Joel I. Klein, chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, and…
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In public schools, incentives matter
Last week (Wichita Public School District’s Path: Not Fruitful) I wrote about an article by Malcolm Gladwell. This article describes a method for evaluating and paying teachers. It’s not based on what public schools do now, which is to reward teachers solely on the basis of longevity and education credentials earned. That’s because we’ve found…
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KU Study an Embarrassment to Sebelius
In the first study to measure the result of pouring all that money on the noggins of schoolkids, the University of Kansas’s Center for Applied Economics has released a study poetically entitled, “The Relationship between School Funding and Student Achievement in Kansas Public Schools.” The verdict? So far, the funding has produced “little evidence of…
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Wichita public school district’s path: not fruitful
One of the issues discussed during the campaign for the bond issue for USD 259, the Wichita public school district, was class size. A major reason given by the district for the need for the bond issue is the desire to provide smaller class sizes. Some opponents such as myself argued that the evidence that…
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Video Reveals Uninformed Citizenry
Utah Education Facts has released a video that illustrates the startling lack of information possessed by the average citizen. This video was made in Utah and uses Utah’s facts, but I’ve made some similar videos in Wichita, and the results are similar. People are mostly uninformed about basic facts. School districts use this to their…
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Wichita Schoolchildren Face a Dangerous Future
A recent piece in the Wall Street Journal by Terry M. Moe illustrates the danger that Wichita schoolchildren face. Here’s an excerpt from the article Change Our Public Schools Need: Democrats favor educational “change” — as long as it doesn’t affect anyone’s job, reallocate resources, or otherwise threaten the occupational interests of the adults running…