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September 24, 2007

September 24, 2007

Can Special Ed students reach grade-level standards?,  Ed Officials mandate school choice options distribution, utilizing web-tech for school choice ...

Foster's Daily Democrat, NH: Fairness of special ed testing debated - Federal testing guidelines unfairly hold special needs children to the same standards as students in regular education, educators say, leading to what one calls a "blame game." Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. said it would be a reversal of the belief that all students can reach appropriate standards when given the necessary tools to succeed.

Washington Times: School options urged for parents - Top federal education officials have released a new handbook urging state and local administrators to explain more effectively to parents that they can transfer their children among schools or access free tutoring services if their child's school is consistently subpar. This guide provides school administrators with strategies and tips on how to ensure more eligible parents are aware of and participate in the options.

Philadelphia Inquirer: Use Web to help parents pick a school - While the Web has spawned an explosion of consumer-oriented information, public schools aren't used to treating parents like customers with options. Parents are treated as a captive audience whose job is to comply with the rules a large bureaucracy sets up mostly for its own purposes. Most public school Web sites are set up to convey rules, or offer defensive, image-buffing PR. A customer focus is long absent in Philadelphia, where so many of the parents are working-class or poor. Middle-class parents, the folks with income to pursue options, have long voted with their feet, either leaving town or turning to the city's rich network of private and religious schools.

Arkansas Catholic: Fort Smith principal analyzes school choice for doctoral thesis - Dr. Karen Hollenbeck, an Arkansas private school principal, chose to write her thesis on "Factors Affecting Non-Public School Choice by Parents in Arkansas." She sent out questionnaires to parents in all elementary schools accredited by the Arkansas Non-Public School Accrediting Association asking them whether they had attended non-public schools, their income level, religion and other demographic questions. She then asked them to look at the most reported reasons for choosing non-public schools and rate their importance. By correlating parental priorities with demographic information, she was able to determine why parents chose non-public schools, and whether those priorities were different for parents choosing Catholic, other religious or secular private schools.

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