Londonderry New Hampshire News Center
An Astonishing Look At No Child Left Behind
May 12, 2008 The arguments about No Child Left Behind surround me. Some days I imagine I am hearing them come through the walls. I work in the Post bureau in Alexandria, Va., a riverside city that houses many of the national organizations that focus on public schools. When I visit the main Post newsroom to prove to my editors I am still ambulatory, I am smack in the middle of another concentration of educational organizations in downtown D.C.
Making Teacher Hiring Less Comfortable
May 12, 2008For those who still think helping children learn is everybody's top priority in our schools, let me cite a disturbing dispute over where to send several hundred teachers at 23 D.C. schools that are about to be closed for inadequate enrollment.
What to Do With Gifted Students?
May 12, 2008I received a letter a few weeks ago from a mother in Prince William County, home to one of the Washington area's big suburban school systems. It starkly captured the parental frustration at the heart of the national debate over what to do with very gifted students. I ran her letter, with a short response, in my weekly Post column, "Extra Credit," in which I answer reader mail. That column produced so many letters that I decided to lay out the debate in this column, using the limitless space of the Internet. I have not been very sympathetic with parents of gifted kids. Some of the reaction below echoes things I have said. But I find it difficult to justify forcing Nancy Klimavicz's son to spend valuable time on busywork. If anyone has any good way out of this impasse, e-mail me at mathewsj@washpost.com.
New Report From KIPP Charters
May 12, 2008Educators argue often whether their work should be judged by test scores. There are thoughtful people on both sides of the debate. We journalists tend to focus on exam results because so many of our readers say that is what they want, and such information is relatively easy to get from regular public schools.
A Challenge Index Boycott of Sorts
May 12, 2008 I received a telephone call two months ago from a high school newspaper reporter in Westchester County, N.Y., asking about a letter she had seen from high schools boycotting the upcoming 2008 Challenge Index rankings of top U.S. high schools in Newsweek. Such letters are rare events. Over the 10 years Newsweek and The Washington Post have used my school rating system, a total of five schools, as best I can remember, have told us they don't want to participate because they don't approve of our method of assessment.
Favorite Education Blogs of 2008
May 12, 2008Early last year, as an experiment, I published a list of what I and commentator Walt Gardner considered our favorite education blogs. Neither Gardner nor I had much experience with this most modern form of expression. We are WAY older than the Web surfing generation. But the list proved popular with readers, and I promised in that column to make this an annual event.
Ways to Measure Schools Without High-Stakes Testing
May 12, 2008Who is going to be our next education president? I know, but I'm not telling. Most of The Washington Post's political reporters these days are young, strong and potentially dangerous. They have warned me about previous attempts to tread on their turf. So I am going to confine myself to helpful advice for our future chief executive, without revealing that person's name.
A Decade of the Challenge Index: Send Me Your School and Your Opinion
May 12, 2008The Challenge Index, my device for assessing high schools on college-level course participation, was born 10 years ago this month in The Post and Newsweek. At the beginning it was mostly a way to draw attention to a book I had written, "Class Struggle: What's Wrong (and Right) with America's Best Public High Schools." I feared that my prose was far too stuck in the minutiae of classroom life to win much of an audience but hoped that a list of schools ranked in a new way might tweak some curiosity.
10 Signs of What Is Not a Crummy Poor-Kid School
May 12, 2008 Two engaging books came out a year ago, each so compelling I planned a major column with guest commentators and debates and confetti and dancers and rock music. Then life intruded. I never got it together. Now my only face-saving option is to make these books the latest selections to our Better Late Than Never Book Club, this column's way of heralding works that I never get around to reading when I should.
Should We Put the Brakes on Advanced Placement Growth?
May 12, 2008Patrick Mattimore -- lawyer, teacher and freelance journalist -- is one of the most insightful writers about schools I know. So when he published a piece in Education Week criticizing the rapid growth in Advanced Placement courses in the country, I read it carefully and asked him to discuss it with me in this column. Mattimore is not only an astute judge of AP policy, but until recently, he was an AP Psychology teacher in San Francisco. He knows the territory like few others, and unlike many people in the debate over how to use AP, he has accomplished the rare feat of changing his mind after discovering facts at odds with his views.
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