The Read
Starting early to prevent dropouts. Courtesy of mindoh.files.wordpress.com
All that is happening inside — and outside — the dropout nation. Updated throughout the day:
- No Child debate? What No Child debate?: Cato’s Neil McCluskey wonders why folks such as himself — who oppose a federal role in education — weren’t invited to the Newtalk.org debate on what to do with the federal education law? The host, John Merrow gives him an answer McCluskey considers “a very narrow exchange.” He is right.
- Expanding school choice, California stye: Some $100 million may be spent on building new charter schools under SB 658, which would also fund year-round schools, according to George B. Sanchez of the L.A. Daily News. The latter part of the bill — and the far larger section, at least fiscally — is why the state teachers union is willing to buck its traditional resistance to expanding charters. Who knew a little wheel-greasing would help in expanding school choice? Anyway, this move is far more positive than the effort attempted by the state House leadership in Indiana last year to essentially vut off funding to charters.
- A benefit of immigration — Good teachers (thanks to Alexander Russo): Importing Filipino natives to the United States in order to teach English and Math once seemed to be confined to the Clark County school district in Las Vegas and other West Coast districts. Now, notes the Washington Post Magazine, they are even helping suburban D.C. school districts fill their shortages. Students get the instruction they need to keep from dropping out. And the teachers? They get to help their families back home.
- More state gaming of No Child (Subscription required): As if Mississippi – whose graduation rate for black males is just under 50 percent for the Class of 2006 — actually needed to lower its curriculum standards. All the state board of education did was merely move above bare minimum. And that’s just following other states in fostering what the folks at Fordham would call the proficiency illusion.
