Education: All Articles and Books

Arnold vs. Arnold

Ron Tang — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 10:00:00 -0400

Education cuts and reform campaigns can be the drinking and driving of California politics. Each carries certain risks when pursued separately. Combined, they can be deadly.

This is a truth that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has found hard to accept. Three years ago, just as he launched his breakneck drive to win voter approval of budget and political reforms, he decided to withhold part of a mandated increase in education funding from his 2005-06 budget proposal. The delay in Proposition 98 funding soon consumed the public attention that Schwarzenegger wanted directed toward his reform proposals. His favorability rating dropped more than 20… more

Academic March Madness

Ron Tang — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 06:36:00 -0400

If you've watched any of the televised men's college basketball tournament this year, you've been bombarded by NCAA commercials that declare: "There are 380,000 NCAA student athletes... and just about every one of them will go pro in something other than sports."

It's an uplifting tagline, but there's a catch. In order to "go pro in something other than sports," that athlete needs a college degree. And far too many male athletes in top-tier Division I basketball programs never graduate.

The teams that played in the Sweet 16 this year have some of the worst academic records in the country, particularly the… more

Taming the Tuition Beast

Ron Tang — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:47:00 -0400

It's not news that the cost of a college degree has risen significantly over the last couple of decades.

Since 1990, tuition and fees have risen by nearly 225 percent at four-year public colleges and by 154 percent at private four-year colleges. The real story is that tuition growth rates often fluctuate wildly from year to year -- which makes it hard for families to plan ahead and budget enough to cover the costs.

Last year, students at Villanova faced an unexpected tuition and fee increase that was double the previous year's.

Students entering Penn State in 2002 had no way of knowing… more

Put Teachers To the Test

Ron Tang — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 20:00:00 -0400

In recent years, reformers have sought to improve our failing public education system by tightening and standardizing the measures we use to judge performance. From the numerical requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act to California's increased focus on assessment and accountability, there's been a conscious attempt to use hard data to measure success at every level of the education system.

But one group does not have its performance measured this way: teachers. Determining the effectiveness of individual teachers -- are they helping our kids learn or not? -- remains a mostly subjective judgment. Yet there's no reason why teachers… more

Don't Link School Spending To Oil Companies' Profits

Ron Tang — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:33:00 -0400

Last week, a bill was proposed by a majority of Assemly Democrats to impose extra taxes on oil companies to help prevent pink slips for teachers. A March 12 vote, mostly along party lines, failed to garner the required two-thirds majority for passage of a tax increase.

But Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez has said he does not plan to give up on the idea.

Despite the importance of not laying off teachers, failure to pass was a good result. The bill, ABX3 9, is not the solution for keeping teachers employed or solving California's budget problems.

Budget problems cannot be solved with taxes… more

Dropout Factories

Ron Tang — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

California has a massive dropout problem: An estimated 25 percent of students fail to complete high school, ultimately costing the state billions in lost income tax revenue, crime costs and public assistance.

Last month, a study from UC Santa Barbara suggested that the dropout problem might be more concentrated than previously thought: It found that just 20 percent of schools account for 80 percent of dropouts, and that many of them are "alternative" schools that are meant to help students who have not succeeded in regular schools.

This finding has drawn fire from leaders of these schools, who argue that it's only… more

A Matter of Degrees

adminn — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 15:53:00 -0500

As the college football season nears its final showdown between Ohio State and LSU, the media-stoked frenzy over which teams were selected for the Bowl Championship Series has reached a fever pitch.

Penn State is in the Alamo Bowl, with less money and media attention. But if team academic performance were considered by the BCS, Penn State would have fared much better.

Over all, the academic performance of big-time college football is dismal. Only 56 percent of Division I-A football players graduate within six years of enrollment. Many who do receive a diploma are tracked into jock majors or… more

Life Chances

adminn — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:35:00 -0500

The blue-ribbon commission has an inauspicious history in American public policy. Most often, assembling a dozen or two bipartisan grandees to deliberate soberly about a problem for several years is merely a way of evading the problem.

But there are exceptions. Though it will probably pass unnoticed, Dec. 22 of this year will mark the 20th anniversary of the creation of one of the most successful policy commissions in modern U.S. history: The National Commission on Children. Chaired by Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, the esteemed group four years later issued a report, Beyond Rhetoric, which was… more

Flexing Their Word Power

adminn — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 07:46:00 -0500

Watching a bunch of gangly middle-schoolers hopping around in their gym clothes at 9 in the morning brought back all sorts of bad memories from my own junior high school days. Still, just by watching Wilmington Middle School students in phys ed class one day last week, I learned a valuable lesson about generosity, voluntarism and just plain common sense.

I went to Wilmington to check out what I thought was a simple yet brilliant idea to help working-class students compete in the high-stakes world of educational testing.

We hear a lot about educational inequality, but we sometimes forget that inequality comes… more

Continuing the Investment

adminn — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 13:58:00 -0500

Deep Creek Elementary School is an education success story. In 2001, Deep Creek, where more than three-quarters of students come from low-income families and 80 percent are black or Hispanic, was one of the worst elementary schools in Baltimore County, Maryland. Its third-graders were reading at a first-grade level. But the new principal, Anissa Brown Dennis, expanded collaboration and professional development for teachers, implemented an aligned reading and math curriculum from pre-K through third grade, and offered summer learning and after-school programs for struggling students. Today, nearly three-quarters of Deep Creek students read on grade level, teacher and student morale… more

If Gingrich Won't Run, Let His Ideas Rule Instead

Articles — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 13:10:00 -0400

Maybe America just isn’t ready for a president named "Newt."

But by any name, we still need reform, and so there’ll be a valuable place for Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who announced Saturday that he’s not running for president next year, concentrating instead on his "American Solutions" program of education and activism. And though many have criticized Gingrich the politician, nobody disputes that he is smart, even visionary.

For a quarter-century, in and out of office, Gingrich has been animated by one fundamental observation: That bureaucratic government has fallen behind the private sector -- "the difference," he says, "between FedEx… more

An Incomplete Report Card

Articles — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 10:07:00 -0400

Last Tuesday’s release of what is known as the "Nation’s Report Card" for math and reading is likely to reignite talk of the so-called racial achievement gap. Despite some good news, the report, published by the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, shows that Latinos, like blacks, haven’t made progress in catching up to the test scores of whites.

But the dour assessment of Latino educational achievement has nothing to do with a racial gap. We can’t use the same lens to interpret Latino data as we do to explain the differences between white and black achievement.

When it comes to… more

We're Still Failing Our Students

Articles — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 10:59:00 -0400

On Monday, the ACLU of Southern California and Public Advocates Inc. released an upbeat progress report on the results of the settlement of Williams vs. California, a class-action suit brought on behalf of the state’s most-neglected students. In the lowest-performing schools, there are more textbooks, adequate facilities and teachers with proper credentials. However, the report, like the settlement, failed to address the bigger issue: achieving "teacher equity" across the state.

More so than textbooks or school facilities, research has shown that teachers have the greatest effect on student learning and, by extension, educational opportunity. Yet in addressing access to good teachers,… more

Expelling Academia's Crackpots

Articles — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:05:00 -0400

You don’t have to be a crusading right-winger to recognize that University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, who compared the victims of the 9/11 World Trade Center attack to Nazis, is an extremist, an ideologue whose scholarship is less than objective.

Nor do you have to be a flame-throwing left-winger to agree that the university where he was once director of the ethnic studies department shouldn’t have ditched him the way it did. It needed to do much, much more.

Two short years ago, Churchill’s labeling of WTC victims as "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi in charge of… more

The Case for Pre-K

Articles — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 11:10:00 -0400

In 1961, 13 three- and four-year-olds from poor black families began attending a preschool class at Perry Elementary School in Ypsilanti, Michigan. They were there as much to learn as to teach. A team of researchers followed not only their time at the preschool, but their trajectory over the next four decades, and the findings were startling:

Compared to a control group of similar children who didn’t attend preschool, this class from Perry Elementary School would be less likely to skip class, be placed in special education, or wind up in jail. They’d be more likely to graduate high school… more

Student Loan Scandal

Articles — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 14:32:00 -0400

Student loan banks and their allies are trying to spin away the public’s outrage over the discovery that private lenders have been bribing college aid officials to steer student business their way. The banks want to change the subject by criticizing the government’s separate direct loan program instead of looking at where all that bribe money comes from: You.

The government spends billions each year on unnecessary subsidies to banks that make student loans. It’s these excess taxpayer subsidies to private student loan banks that are the root cause of the college loan scandal. They ought to be eliminated.

There are… more

A Rank Exercise

Articles — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 15:44:00 -0400

Until a few years ago, America’s elementary and secondary schools generally escaped our national obsession with lists. Almost every week another ranking of best communities, most beautiful people or top hospitals is published.

But in 1998 Newsweek, which is owned by The Washington Post, began publishing a list of "The 100 Best High Schools in America." The ranking is based on "The Challenge Index," a measure developed by Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews. The list, published annually the past few years, has become increasingly influential. Other media outlets now cover it like a horserace, and high schools all over… more

Refining the Most Vital Kind of Energy

Articles — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 14:09:00 -0400

Admittedly, it feels like an odd time to be singing the praises of Big Oil.

Last week, the driving season kicked off with gasoline prices hitting a Memorial Day record and profits gushing across the petroleum sector. Recently, the House of Representatives passed anti-gouging legislation to protect the public from "being ripped off" at the pump, in the words of one lawmaker.

But for Southern California refiners, this summer promises to be marked by more than consumer outrage. In July, executives from ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil Corp., BP, Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp. will be celebrating the achievements of as many as… more

Whose Big Government?

Articles — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 11:47:00 -0400

The most confusing political phenomenon of recent times is "big-government conservatism." The lines on every graph show the same pattern: Government -- whether measured by spending, the deficit, the number of employees, or earmarked appropriations -- expanded through the Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush Senior administrations; declined steadily under Clinton; then shot rapidly northward after Republicans took control of the White House in 2001.

For conservatives, the story of big-government conservatism has become a chapter in their own self-satisfied mythology. It is the story of moral corruption, of the dreams of libertarian paradise hijacked by the grasping Washington interest groups.… more

LAUSD Sees a Future in Career Ed

Articles — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 20:11:00 -0400

As Supt. David L. Brewer pledged last week to transform the culture of the troubled Los Angeles school system, he once again emphasized the need "to ensure every student graduates ... college-prepared and career-ready."

Though it sounded like the same old, same old to me, Santiago Jackson couldn’t help but smile. He loves that line.

Until it became Brewer’s mantra, "I hadn’t heard the words ‘career-ready’ coming from a superintendent for a long time," says Jackson, the Los Angeles Unified School District official who’s in charge of what traditionally was called vocational education but is now known by a new term of… more