In a little over a month, the University of Rochester will be handed the keys, so to speak, to East High School. The State Education Department approved the UR-East deal last year in an attempt to turn around one of the state’s lowest performing schools. There are few delusions about East. The school — with […]
Urban education
Posted inNews & Opinion
Study renews emphasis on pre-kindergarten
Delayed speech and limited vocabularies were often cited by former School 50 principal Tim Mains as clear indicators of how under-prepared many city school children are entering kindergarten compared to their suburban peers. One landmark study dealing with early childhood development showed that by age 3, children from wealthier families have much larger vocabularies. Walking […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Ravitch on education’s reign of error
It’s a gross understatement to say that Diane Ravitch is a lightning rod for politicians, teachers, and education reformers. Once a marshal of former President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind education law, she later rejected NCLB and the reform model it energized, saying it was completely wrong. Charter school and education reform advocates […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
The test score rage: rhetoric versus reform
Well, that gave everybody something to talk about, didn’t it? State education officials released school-district scores on standardized tests last week, and the news was awful. Only 31 percent of the state’s students met or exceeded the “proficiency” standard for math. And only 31.1 percent of them met the English standard. And among the large […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Community report
The scores on ACT Rochester’s recently released community report card probably won’t shock you. Most people know that the nine-county Rochester region, overall, is doing better than the state in certain areas — the economy, education, health, and housing. | But when the report focuses on the city, it exposes stark disparities involving race and […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Did Chicago’s strike teach us anything?
The closely-watched battle between Chicago’s teachers and Mayor Rahm Emanuel helped to illuminate some of the problems confronting urban education. But even though the strike is over, the war between education reformers and urban teachers goes on, says NY Times columnist Joe Nocera. Teacher evaluations linked to standardized tests and charter schools remain contentious issues, […]
