Class Struggle

School ignores advice from learning disability experts

Jay Mathews — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 16:29:30 GMT

Stacie Brockman is the Prince George’s County mother of lively twin 9-year-old boys. Her sons were born two months premature. She has done everything possible to deal with the disabilities that often impede the progress of such children.

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Experts’ wrong way to pick best principals

Jay Mathews — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 19:19:00 GMT

Anyone involved with schools has noticed that many governors, legislators and school boards think business practices can improve education. There is little proof of this. It’s a fad. If we leave it alone, it will go away.

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How to survive our education battles

Jay Mathews — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 06:00:33 GMT

The latest fashions in the American education system are, as usual, inspiring raucous debate. I try to take sides in these arguments. Isn’t it my job to explain who’s right? But I wonder.

There is much chatter, for instance, over education historian Diane Ravitch’s fiery assault on Ben Austin, founder of the Parent Revolution organization. The California “parent trigger law” Austin sponsored just cost a Los Angeles principal her job. Fifty-three percent of parents at the Weigand Avenue Elementary School in the city’s Watts neighborhood signed a petition to fire Irma Cobian after three years of low scores. The school board obeyed the law and let Cobian go.

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How a special-education student found success

Jay Mathews — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 06:55:44 GMT

Seven years ago, when I first wrote about Paula Lazor’s teenage son ,John, his future was uncertain. My headline read: “Bright, But Falls Asleep in Class.”

Educators at both public and private schools had helped him for years with his learning disabilities. But homework was still torture and he had trouble following what teachers said. The nodding off in class had begun in eighth grade.

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Six ways to survive college search with a smile

Jay Mathews — Sun, 26 May 2013 00:28:15 GMT

Katie Mathews, the youngest of my three children, graduated from law school two weeks ago. That ends for me 22 years of college touring, SAT fretting, application essay reading, rejection angst, acceptance relief and tuition paying. I still worry about the job market, but barring an appointment to the Federal Reserve Board, that is beyond my influence.

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What do you do if your child isn’t going to college?

Jay Mathews — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:22:20 GMT

A parent asked me recently what she should do if her child doesn’t appear headed for college. The student in question is just a fourth-grader, but this is the Washington area, probably our nation’s most college-conscious region. Parents here like to plan ahead.

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Miriam Hughey-Guy, one of best principals ever, transforms an Arlington school

Jay Mathews — Sun, 19 May 2013 02:54:28 GMT

Five years ago, I thought I was going to catch Miriam Hughey-Guy, principal of Barcroft Elementary School in Arlington County, making an excuse for her school’s failure to reach federal proficiency targets three years in a row.

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A powerful term in U.S. high schools: DBQ

Jay Mathews — Sun, 12 May 2013 01:24:28 GMT

You may not know what a DBQ is. For most of my life, neither did I. But in the high schools of this region and the rest of the country it has become an important and in some ways fearsome term.

It haunts the dreams of 400,000 teenagers who will take the Advanced Placement exam in U.S. history Wednesday. It is part of a massive reform of the AP exam system that controls the schedules of most of the nation’s high schools every May.

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Two D.C. high schools dare to require deep research

Jay Mathews — Thu, 09 May 2013 06:44:36 GMT

I often despair over the sorry state of writing and research in our high schools. Only private schools and public schools with the International Baccalaureate diploma program require research papers of significant length. Two million new high school graduates head to college every year — but only 10 percent, by my reckoning — have had to write a long paper or do a major project.

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Did D.C. schools cheat? Ask the students.

Jay Mathews — Sun, 05 May 2013 04:28:00 GMT

Dear D.C. parents and grandparents: Want to uncover the truth behind the D.C. schools’ test-tampering allegations? Ask your student if he or she ever made erasures on the annual D.C. tests, and let me know the answer.

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Surprise! D.C. admits school test tampering at Meridian Public Charter

Jay Mathews — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 20:54:00 GMT

The Meridian Public Charter School is a well-regarded institution serving students in preschool through eighth grade on 13th Street between V and W streets in Northwest Washington. Nearly all of its 531 students are black or Hispanic. Eighty-seven percent are from low-income families. The student body’s reading and math proficiency rates are about 15 percentage points above the city average.

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Admissions 101: why smart, poor students are dumb

Jay Mathews — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 04:10:11 GMT

Selective colleges get plenty of applications from the top-scoring children of affluent parents, including many in this region. What the colleges need, their admissions officers say, are more high-achieving, low-income applicants. Places such as Georgetown and Duke don’t like being called country clubs for the rich. They want more academically talented poor kids. Why aren’t they applying?

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Motivated student seeks challenge. School says no.

Jay Mathews — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 19:31:00 GMT

Fayette County, Ga., population 106,567, resembles many Washington-area suburbs. It has lovely trees, expensive cars and good schools. Most of the residents are middle-class. They set high standards for their kids. But what is happening to one particular Fayette County student is sadly at odds with the way ambitious students are treated here.

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Nation’s best high school may be closed

Jay Mathews — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:17:33 GMT

I have been ranking the most challenging schools in the country and this region for 15 years. Rarely have I encountered anything like the American Indian Public Charter High School of Oakland, Calif., the No. 1 school on my 2013 list. It has risen to the top just as its city school board is trying to shut it down.

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Hidden power of teacher awards

Jay Mathews — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 04:46:24 GMT

I used to think student test score gains were a good way to rate teachers. I don’t think that any more. Grading individual teachers with scores is too approximate, too erratic and too destructive of the team spirit that makes great schools. Rating schools, rather than teachers, by test score gains is better, at least until we find a way to measure deeper indicators of learning.

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Research projects harder than I thought, but worth it

Jay Mathews — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 07:53:00 GMT

One of education’s most serious flaws is the failure to require that students produce a research paper or project before they graduate from high school.

I vent on this often. I once thought we just needed a change of attitude, but I am learning it is more complicated.

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While fixing Prince George’s schools, don’t mess with successes

Jay Mathews — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 18:07:36 GMT

I understand the frustration of Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III over low school performance. I see why he wants to take power away from a sometimes ineffective school board. All over the country, conscientious leaders like Baker are looking for ways to improve learning, particularly for poor kids.

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North Carolina superintendent defends Teach For America

Jay Mathews, By Ray V. Spain — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:54:00 GMT

My colleague Valerie Strauss published an essay a few weeks back by Matt Barnum suggesting that the Teach For America program had outlived its usefulness. Barnum, a former TFA teacher, said the organization had done good work in the past, but now stood in the way of creating a corps of good teachers who would stay longer than two years. Warren County (N.C.) school Superintendent Ray V. Spain sent me this response to Barnum, which I thought was interesting enough to post here. We haven’t discussed TFA in a while. Comments welcome.

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Why my grandson, 4, won’t be taking a gifted ed test

Jay Mathews — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 20:18:00 GMT

My eldest grandson, Ben Mathews, just turned four. According to the New York Times, that is a perilous age in that big city. Many four year olds are toiling through exercises designed by their parents and tutoring companies to prepare for kindergarten gifted program entrance tests.

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AP good for high school, bad for college?

Jay Mathews — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:00:00 GMT

I complained recently that college professors too often wrongly dismiss high school teachers as being unsuited to teach college-level classes such as the Advanced Placement courses so popular in the Washington region. Two scholars from distinguished universities gently chided me for being too hard on their academic colleagues. They might be right.

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Ability grouping is back despite scholarly qualms

Jay Mathews — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 20:35:00 GMT

My elementary School in San Mateo, Calif., had reading ability groups in every classroom. I arrived in the middle of third grade in 1952, and I was put in the lowest group, the canaries. By June, I had clawed my way up to the top group, the bluebirds.

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Arguing about school reforms that go nowhere

Jay Mathews — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 20:09:00 GMT

In the 1990s, Las Montanas High School (a fictional name for a real place) throbbed with excitement over technological advances in California’s Silicon Valley where it was located. Forty-four percent of the students were low-income but the school’s administrators and teachers vowed to override that handicap by turning it into a high tech magnet with a strong interdisciplinary focus.

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Biggest study ever says KIPP gains substantial

Jay Mathews — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT

KIPP, previously known as the Knowledge Is Power Program, has had more success than any other large educational organization in raising the achievement of low-income students, both nationally and in the District. But many good educators, burned by similarly hopeful stories in the past, have wondered whether KIPP were for real.

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Missed challenges more worrisome than tests

Jay Mathews — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 16:00:00 GMT

My long-time friend and source Ken Bernstein, known as teacherken to his many online fans, produced the most-read article on the Post’s Web site recently. He apologized to college professors for our high schools’ failure to prepare students “for the kind of intellectual work that you have every right to expect of them.”

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More high school may be bad for this student

Jay Mathews — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 21:48:50 GMT

Is Laura Linder’s son Chris being pushed out of Thomas Stone High School?

It seems that way. Charles County school officials did not honor several credits the transfer student earned in Yuba City, Calif., where he was a 12th-grader. He is 18, but Maryland says he is still in 10th grade. He has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He has difficulty with math and science. But he does not qualify for full learning disability services.

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