Save D.C.’s Catholic Schools
National Review Online, NY, June 24, 2008
Hundreds of D.C. parents breathed a sigh of relief last week when a House subcommittee voted to fund the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program for another year.

A Choice for D.C. Children
Washington Post, D.C., June 24, 2008
Among the most maddening arguments used against the D.C. school voucher program is that it hurts the public schools.

Lawmaker to get school-choice award
Atlanta Journal Constitution, GA, June 23, 2008
James Salzer reports that Senate President Pro-Tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) is scheduled to be presented the Alliance for School Choice’s National Legislator of the Year Award Tuesday in Savannah.

UTLA Needs To Be Progressive
Los Angeles Times, CA, June 24, 2008
Rather than continue on a diatribe about charter schools versus "public schools" (despite the apparent support of charter schools by UTLA President A.J. Duffy), a reevaluation of what public schools should look like is desperately needed.

Attack on Charters Goes Overboard
The News Journal, DE, June 24, 2008
It seems that the Delaware State Education Association (DSEA) and its allies in Delaware are at war with the charter system in the state and will stop at nothing to extinguish this outlet for quality education.

All Rochester Schools Need Flexibility To Succeed
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, NY, June 24, 2008
We need innovation! As superintendent of a large public school system, I support the creation of great options for students.

Gov. Patrick Introduces School Reform Initiative
Boston Herald, MA, June 24, 2008
Other details of the initiative have already been made public, including the creation of so-called Readiness Schools — public schools that would function like charter schools.

On Tests, Charter Schools Outperform Districts
New York Sun, NY, June 24, 2008
When compared to the overall scores for the school districts in which they are located, some charter schools - such as Bronx Preparatory in the South Bronx and the KIPP Infinity school in Harlem - had as much as double the portion of students scoring proficient in math and reading.

Better-Qualified Teachers
New York Times, NY, June 23, 2008
The United States has a long and dishonorable history of dumping the least-qualified teachers into schools that serve poor and minority students.

Election to Impact Education in Nation
Arizona Republic, AZ, June 23, 2008
Education’s moment in the national political sun has come and gone, replaced by a faltering economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Summit Convened By Jeb Bush Seeks School Changes
Miami Herald, FL, June 23, 2008
Hoping to invigorate a national dialogue about education reform, former Gov. Jeb Bush convened top education officials last week near Orlando for a two-day summit.

D.C. Parents, Students Need Opportunity Scholarships
D.C. Examiner, D.C., June 23, 2008
Today, some African-American leaders, Capitol Hill lawmakers and union officials are still condemning these children to poor-performing schools and denying them the education they want and deserve. It was wrong then, and it’s still wrong today.

All Parents Deserve the Right to Choose
Cherry Hill Courier Post, NJ, June 22, 2008
State lawmakers should approve pilot program to allow 4,000 kids in poor communities to escape failing schools.

‘A Voice’ Through School Choice
Charleston Post Courier, SC , June 23, 2008
Giving parents more choices about their children’s education invariably gives teachers more help from their students’ mothers and fathers.

Teacher Instills A Love Of Words, But The Lesson Is About Life
Los Angeles Times, CA, June 21, 2008
A public charter school founded by Mike Piscal, one of Holmes’ Harvard-Westlake colleagues, View Park wanted to find out if high-quality teaching could make a difference in the lives of underperforming black students.

Candidates Should Tell Voters Where They Stand On Charter School Reform
The News Journal, DE, June 21, 2008
The battle is over schools. News reports show that the Delaware State Education Association paid a big Washington public relations firm to craft a campaign to limit the expansion of charter schools.

Teachers’ Union on Reform
New York Times, NY, June 20, 2008
Blaming “ineffective teachers” and union contracts may be ideologically satisfying, but at the end of the day it does little to solve the problems facing our schools.

It’s Culture, Not Just Class Size
Los Angeles Times, CA, June 20, 2008
Class size is not the issue, really; it’s the culture of the class that matters. I do not mean racial or ethnic or socioeconomic culture, I mean the culture of a particular group of students in a particular room in a particular institution.

Presidential Candidates Urged To Focus On Schools
Florida Times-Union, FL, June 19, 2008
A former Democratic governor’s campaign to get the presidential candidates of both parties to pay greater heed to education received a boost from a couple of prominent Republicans Thursday.

Five Reforms Needed To Fix America
Evening Bulletin, PA, June 20, 2008
More and more informed critics agree that it is about time to introduce the full force of competition and the full force of our miracle-producing market economy to the failing school system.

Follow The Money, Lose The Faith
North Country Gazette, NY, June 19, 2008
Strange as it may sound, this is a hot new trend in education: creating faith-based schools without the faith.

Jeb Bush Supports Return Of School Vouchers
WESH, FL, June 19, 2008
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said he will fight for two controversial amendments. One of the amendments would restore Bush’s private school voucher program; the other would give lawmakers the power to send public school money to religion-based schools.

Charter Schools: Union On The Attack
The News Journal, DE, June 20, 2008
The state’s largest school employee union hired a Washington, D.C., consulting firm to craft a public relations strategy for limiting the expansion of charter schools in Delaware.

Charter Schools Deserve Support
Greenville News, SC, June 20, 2008
Not all charter schools perform miracles, but many are transforming young lives. USA Today recently carried a story about a Philadelphia school riddled with violence and underachievement that was turned into a high-performing charter school.

2 School Entrepreneurs Lead the Way on Change
New York Times, NY, June 19, 2008
Ms. Kopp and Mr. Barth are a power couple in the world of education, emblematic of a new class of young social entrepreneurs seeking to reshape the United States’ educational landscape by creating new schools…

22 Assistant Principals Are Latest to Be Fired
Washington Post, D.C., June 19, 2008
Although the administrative leaders work on year-to-year contracts and can be fired without cause under D.C. law, an official with the principals union

Many States Watch - And Like - Florida’s Education Policy
St. Petersburg Times, FL, June 19, 2008
Florida is No. 1 in the nation in vouchers. It’s No. 2 in charter school enrollment. It’s No. 4 in the percentage of high school students passing college-level exams.

Gov. Ted Strickland Gathers Educators, Community Leaders To ID What Works In Schools
Cleveland Plain Dealer, OH, June 19, 2008
School’s out for the summer, but more than 300 educators, business chiefs, community leaders and parents will begin comparing notes Thursday in a first-of-its-kind statewide summit on improving public education.

School Vouchers And Other Forms Of Choice
Outside the Beltway, VA
June 18, 2008
The depth of the opposition to school choice has convinced me that a new approach is needed, though my proposal is a long shot at best. It is modeled on welfare reform.

Delaware Charter School Moratorium Heads to House
D.C. Examiner, D.C., June 19, 2008
A House committee on Wednesday cleared the way for a House vote on a resolution calling for a one-year moratorium on new charter school applications in Delaware.

Vouching for Private Schools
Indiana Daily Student, IN, June 19, 2008
The idea of school vouchers has often been both controversial and a tough sell. However, those who have supported giving the idea a chance will be pleased to hear that Louisiana seems to be moving forth with a voucher program of their own.

Time to Spread The Word About School Options
Sacramento Bee, CA, June 19, 2008
To its great credit, the Sacramento City Unified school board has done a lot to increase educational options for families. No longer are students limited to one-size-fits-all assigned schools, determined only by where they live.

Grads credit KIPP for Their Success
The Daily Item of Lynn, MA, June 18, 2008
Four years ago, in attempt to raise awareness of his new upstart public charter middle school, KIPP Academy Lynn Director Josh Zoia began dropping into after school programs and community organizations, passing out informative fliers to the city’s youth.

"We are at that time of year when millions of American college and high school students will stride across the stage, take diploma in hand and set out to the wider world, most of them utterly unable to write a clear and coherent English sentence. How is this possible? The answer is simple and even obvious: Students can’t write clean English sentences because they are not being taught what sentences are."

Not much has changed in the two years since University of Illinois Dean Emeritus Stanley Fish wrote about his method for remediating college students in the art and science of correct writing. Ingenious though his approach is, it strikes me as incredibly sad that it takes their invention of an entirely new language for college students to grasp the proper mechanics of their native tongue. (Ever notice how many of the people who learned English as a second language in middle and high school in other countries seem to have a better grasp of grammar, spelling and vocabulary than those of us weaned on American English and educated in American schools?)

We know too many of our kids can’t write. So what are our schools (let’s leave colleges out, for the moment, under the assumption that students should master English - the mechanics, at least - by the time they’ve earned a high school diploma) doing about it? In some schools, Latin’s coming back. What about sentence diagramming? (My own unscientific polling seem to indicate this is a dying, or dead, skill.) Are your kids being instructed in proper grammar, spelling and vocabulary usage? How (well)? At what grade? Tell us your experiences…