Education
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Top Story
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5/13/2012
Richmond Times-Dispatch
In the early 1990s, Virginia parents rose up in protest and ultimately struck down something called the Common Core of Learning that state education officials were proposing to implement in every public school. The Common Core of that day derived from fuzzy Outcome-Based Education theory that placed heavy emphasis on shaping students’ sociopolitical attitudes and far less on the academic basics.
In 1995, Virginians rallied in support of the State Board of Education’s adoption of Standards of Learning to provide a means of objectively measuring students’ grasp of the fundamentals of math, English, science, and history. Virginians generally took pride in independent analyses indicating the Old Dominion’s standards were among the nation’s most rigorous.
Seventeen years later, Virginians
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Features
3/14/2012
Executive Summary
March 2012
Two important developments have impacted English Language Learners (ELLs) in U.S. public schools during the past decade. The first is that their performance on standardized tests has become a meaningful
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3/13/2012
Thom Hartmann's syndicated show "The Big Picture"
Lexington’s Don Soifer debates higher education finance with liberal television host Thom Hartmann on his nationally-syndicated television program “The Big Picture.” The host advocated expanding federal
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3/13/2012
Virginia’s General Assembly finalized a number of sensible improvements to the state’s charter school laws in the closing hours of its 2012 legislative session. The changes seem unlikely to shift the
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Education Articles
| 5/13/2012 |
Richmond Times-Dispatch
In the early 1990s, Virginia parents rose up in protest and ultimately struck down something called the Common Core of Learning that state education officials were proposing to implement in every public
. . . Read more |
| 3/14/2012 |
Executive Summary March 2012
Two important developments have impacted English Language Learners (ELLs) in U.S. public schools during the past decade. The first is that their performance on standardized tests has become a meaningful
. . . Read more |
| 3/13/2012 |
Thom Hartmann's syndicated show "The Big Picture"
Lexington’s Don Soifer debates higher education finance with liberal television host Thom Hartmann on his nationally-syndicated television program “The Big Picture.” The host advocated expanding federal
. . . Read more |
| 3/13/2012 |
Virginia’s General Assembly finalized a number of sensible improvements to the state’s charter school laws in the closing hours of its 2012 legislative session. The changes seem unlikely to shift the
. . . Read more |
| 2/12/2012 |
Richmond Times Dispatch
In the coming weeks, Virginia lawmakers will decide whether to change the state's education laws to allow a new movement of high-quality public charter schools to open their doors.
Virginia has allowed
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| 1/27/2012 |
Don Soifer is a guest on former New York Governor David Paterson’s afternoon talk show on one of New York City’s largest stations. They discuss the procedural obstacles to firing bad teachers in New
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| 1/6/2012 |
Indiana, a state where both student performance and minority achievement gaps approximate the national average, has been taking significant steps toward a promising educational future. With a scholarship
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| 11/6/2011 |
Richmond Times Dispatch (VA)
While Virginia was a national leader in developing substantive content standards for basic K-12 subjects in the 1990s, it has lagged badly in enabling parents to make choices as to which schools best
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| 10/18/2011 |
Issue Brief
As Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the leadership of the Chicago Public Schools have pressed to lengthen their school day by 90 minutes, the response from its teachers union has raised some eyebrows
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| 9/30/2011 |
Issue Brief
Civil rights authorities at the federal Education and Justice departments have called off their investigation of Arizona policies intended to ensure that teachers of English Language Learners (ELLs) can
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| 9/19/2011 |
Jack Kemp Foundation - Game Plan for an Exceptional America
“America needs an education system where parents have influence and values have a voice.” — Jack Kemp
A great nation requires an effective system of education, in the twenty-first century more
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| 9/14/2011 |
Testimony before the Pennsylvania House of Representatives State Government Committee
An effective policy focus supporting English language use would have strong potential to benefit Pennsylvania educationally and economically. If implemented soundly, it can benefit the state’s economy
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| 8/26/2011 |
Issue Brief
Obama Administration officials announced earlier this month that they would consider waiver requests from states “seeking relief” from provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Without offering
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| 7/8/2011 |
Issue Brief
President Obama this week continued to describe his Administration’s changes to federal student lending programs as essential steps in fighting rising college costs. But research continues to demonstrate
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| 7/1/2011 |
Daily Oklahoman
The waning of U.S. history and civics as subjects taught in public schools has received little attention in education reform debates of recent years, except for occasional alarms raised by scholarly commissions.
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| 6/24/2011 |
Washington Times
Already, national political fundraising machines are beginning to hum and sputter toward early targets in their quests to break another election cycle’s worth of spending records.
The nation’s largest
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| 6/19/2011 |
Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch
The latest national sampling of what students know and understand about United States history yielded an answer in line with numerous surveys done by both governmental and independent authorities in recent
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| 5/18/2011 |
Armed Forces Journal Letter to the Editor
Online programs that utilize state-of-the-art education technology represent a promising venue for officer education educational development, as retired Col. Gwynne Burke suggests, (“A Better Way to Educate,”
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| 5/16/2011 |
Issue Brief
Empire-building aspirations by officials in charge of federal programs are nothing new. But the Obama Administration officials running the U.S. Department of Education are taking this time-honored practice
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