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| Think
Recent Test Scores Show Schools are Failing?
Think Again!
Over
the past month, media outlets across the
country have been abuzz with stories about
student test scores. In February, the U.S.
Department of Education released the 2005
National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP) scores for twelfth graders, and the
country was astounded to find out that the
number of students achieving “proficiency”
in reading has dropped significantly since
1992, even while high school GPAs have been
on the rise. The next week, the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce released a state-by-state “report
card” that graded every state on,
among other things, fourth and eighth grade
NAEP scores. Read
Full Story
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UNICEF
Finds US Among Worst Places to be a Kid
The
United States lags behind nearly every other
developed country in many of the factors
that contribute to child well-being, according
to a UNICEF report released in February.
The report, “An overview of child
well-being in rich countries,” collected
data from 30 countries on 40 indicators
that spanned every part of a child’s
life – including poverty, home environment,
health, and education. Of the 21 nations
that had enough data to be included in the
overall ranking, the U.S. finished 20th,
just barely ahead of the United Kingdom.
Read
Full Story
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| Minnesota
Coalition Pushes for a “21st Century”
Schools and Funding
The
Minnesota state legislature needs to “bring
[the] education funding formula into the
21st century,” says a coalition of
statewide education organizations, school
districts, and parents. The coalition, named
P.S. Minnesota, is dedicated to providing
to all students “the resources they
need for a world-class education”
and is engaged in an advocacy campaign directed
at pushing the state legislature to update
what they say is an outdated and inadequate
funding formula. Read
Full Story
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| Think
Tank Reports “Severely Flawed”
Most
reports from education policy think tanks
are not worth the paper on which they are
printed, according to a new education policy
research center. The Think Tank Review Project,
a collaborative research project at the
Education and the Public Interest Center
(EPIC) at the University of Colorado at
Boulder and the Education Policy Research
Unit (EPRU) at Arizona State University,
seeks to review reports from think tanks
and to comment on their research methods,
reliability, and validity. Read
Full Story
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National
Council of Churches Event: “Fixing
No Child Left Behind”
“Wake
up and dream” of a new movement, the
Rev. Dr. Bernice Powell Jackson urged listeners
in her morning message at an event calling
for major changes to the No Child Left Behind
Act. “NCLB,” she said, “ignores
the realities of children’s lives.”
Intending to “prepare justice advocates
for the reauthorization debate” and
requesting action commitments from each
of the 100 participants from across the
nation, the Committee on Public Education
and Literacy of the National Council of
Churches, the nation’s largest ecumenical
religious organization, hosted a full-day
conference on NCLB last Friday, March 9,
in Washington, DC. Read
Full Story
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