Rochester City School District officials say that they hope to provide all students with the high-tech devices they need to do the advanced level of work expected of them. It’s the first tier to a more ambitious plan that Annmarie Lehner, the district’s information technology officer, will present to the school board later today. The […]
student achievement
Posted inNews & Opinion
New Orleans goes all charter
It’s finally happened. The US is about to have its first all-charter school system. New Orleans will close its last remaining traditional public schools and beginning this fall, all of the city’s students will have to enroll in a charter school through a computerized lottery system. Some in the education community see this as the […]
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More Big Five mayors interested in mayoral control
Mayoral control is back. Maybe it never went away. An Ithaca Journal report out of Albany says that the State Senate supports giving Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano control of that city’s schools. And Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said recently that he’s interested in mayoral control, too. Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren has so far refrained from making […]
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Imagination more important than testing, Ravitch says
As news of how US students’ scores on the most recent Program for International Student Assessment exams compared to their peers in many other countries, a kind hysteria set in. US students’ proficiency in math, science, and reading barely ranked in the top 20. While some education and business experts read the results as further […]
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Student behavior: Vargas dares to go there
When Rochester schools Superintendent Bolgen Vargas presented his proposal for college-run schools last week, it was just one piece of a larger package of steps needed, he said, to improve student achievement. The full pac kage includes improving financial management to reduce the hand-wringing over budget gaps; working with BOCES to revive a technical careers program […]
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GUEST COMMENTARY: Wealth disparity and our graduation rate
Not long ago, published research demonstrated that countries that had a high disparity between wealth and poverty were also characterized by low confidence in their government and contempt for the law. There is a justifiable assumption that the government is corrupt, serving the elite while either actively suppressing the poor or failing to use the […]
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It’s not your problem
Only about a quarter of Rochester’s 9th graders graduate four years later — and only 4 percent of those freshmen get Regents diplomas. In 2001, only 11 percent of Rochester’s 8th graders passed the state math exam. If you live in a Rochester suburb, that’s not your problem. It’s not the State of New […]
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Facing the crisis
In the midst of preparations for war, with budget crises looming in Albany, in Monroe County, in City Hall, it’s easy to overlook one of the biggest crises of all: the waste of minds that is taking place in the Rochester school district. We’ve heard about that crisis so often that we’re bored with […]
