In order to meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind, New York State
and Illinois have stopped dedicating funds to providing enriched programs
for gifted students, The New York Times reports.
“As long as students pass the exams, the federal law offers no rewards for
raising the scores of high achievers, or punishment if their progress lags.”
We have special protection for the disabled, the various races, the two
genders (I think), ESL students–and we condemn the brightest to
intellectual starvation.
The consequences of abandoning a substantial percentage of the Republic’s
brightest students–even if the great cities, by virtue of their size, and
the wealthiest suburbs, by spending their own money, are able to protect
their brightest–will be severe. “Justice cannot sleep forever.”
Thanks to ALEX R. COHEN, J.D.

Larry Lessig posts on a recent debate between California 12th District incumbent Democrat Tom Lantos and challenger Ro Khanna. The debate included a discussion of the No Child Left Behind Act (google) (teoma) (alltheweb) (yahoo).
And here’s a link to one of my favorite exchanges. Ro criticizes Congressman Lantos for supporting the “No Child (except public school childred) Left Behind Act.” Just “talking to teachers,” he says, would have told you that Act wouldn’t work. In classic DC style, Lantos’ response: Ted Kennedy supported it, so it is “outrageous” for a “newcomer” to criticize what people who have “devoted their whole life to education” say. Ro is cut off in his reply: “I’m assuming that teachers who have devoted their whole life to education know more…”

In 1980, when William Winter became governor of Mississippi, there was no state funded kindergarten. School attendance was not compulsory. Mississippi ranked last in the nation among most educational indicators. And in the more than 25 years that had passed since the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision, the state had not been able to come to terms with school desegregation.
In 1982, Gov. Winter succeeded, against all odds, in passing the most sweeping education reform the state had ever seen, which among other things established kindergarten for all Mississippians.
NPR

Doug Erickson profiles Madison Metropolitan School District Administrator Art Rainwater.

s objectionable as the idea is, buying off terrible teachers often works better than firing them.
Many times, settlements save taxpayer money and more effectively protect students. But the Madison School Board went too far last week in giving superintendent Art Rainwater sole authority to flash cash to settle employee misconduct cases.
A 4-3 board vote allows school administration to, in essence, pay teachers to quit – without board discussion or approval.
Opinion Page: Wisconsin State Journal

Some school systems are starting to equip certain grades with laptops. This article describes a survey Maine’s 2 year old 7th & 8th grade program.
There are many challenges to successful technology implementations, including:

• Opportunity cost (dollars & time) What are we not doing when we’re spending money on laptops & overhead for them?
• Training & Support
• Things change fast, are we better off to support our student’s critical thinking, rather than the latest windows, mac or linux pc? (I think we are). These tools will change quite a bit by the time the students enter the workforce.

Lee Sensenbrenner writes:
In a sign that this spring’s Madison School Board elections are being taken more seriously than in years past, the debate season has already begun and an independent Web site is tracking the candidates’ positions.
Whether the district will pursue another referendum to address its budget problems is certainly a leading issue, but candidates are also pushing curriculum changes to the front, as well asserting that board members have not been sufficiently independent from the district’s administration.
I’ll be posting video clips and mp3 files here shortly.

NY Times OP-ED Columnist Nick Kristof on the weakness in US science and math education.
Mr. Subbakrishna, a management consultant specializing in technology, notes that in his native Bangalore, children learn algebra in elementary school. All in all, he says, the average upper-middle-class child in Bangalore finishes elementary school with a better grounding in math and science than the average kid in the U.S.

In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that segregating students in public schools by race denied black children their constitutional right to equal protection under the law.
Brown vs. Board of Education sparked the civil rights movement that wrought enormous change to America’s laws and public schools. Yet 50 years later, most African-American children in Wisconsin remain far behind whites in education, jobs, housing, safety and family stability – further behind, in some measures, than in any other state. Why, in a Northern state with a progressive tradition, have we seen so little progress after so much time?
The Journal Sentinel has an excellent set of articles here.