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Sector Spotlight
Report Release: Reforming Teacher Pensions for a Changing Work Force
New Education Sector report examines teacher pensions and details the problems facing current state pension programs.
Sport or Not? A Question for the Courts
Senior Policy Analyst Elena Silva interviewed by the New York Times on Title IX.
Teachers Unions as Agents of Reform
Brad Jupp, an architect of Denver's landmark performance-based teacher pay system, ProComp, is an outspoken advocate of both labor organizing and quality education for disadvantaged kids. In this interview, Jupp talks about ProComp, his views on teacher unionism, and the future of the teaching profession.
Education Sector Welcomes Three New Board Members
Education Sector's board of directors names three prominent leaders in the fields of education and journalism to the board: David W. Breneman, Richard Lee Colvin, and Peter McWalters.
For-profit colleges: Do they shortchange students?
Policy Director Kevin Carey comments on a recent Senate HELP Committee hearing on for-profit colleges.
Analysis and Perspectives
Magazine Articles
America's Teaching Crisis
This article originally appeared in the summer 2007 issue of Democracy.
- Author:
- Andrew J. Rotherham
- Web Address:
- http://www.democracyjournal.co...
- Publication Date:
- June 11, 2007
- Read more about
- Teacher Quality
For too many students, American public education is failing. Class and race still play a significant and disturbing role in determining access to educational opportunity, and as a result large and unjust gaps in achievement and outcomes still divide American children. The 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress indicates that, by the time they are in the fourth grade, low-income children are roughly two-and-a-half times less likely to be meeting grade-level proficiency standards as compared to their more affluent peers. And studies from Education Week, the Harvard Civil Rights Project, and the Manhattan Institute all indicate that barely more than half of African-American and Hispanic students finish high school on time, while more than three-quarters of white students do. These disparities exist not because some children are inherently less capable than others, but because we have failed to create an educational system that provides even an approximation of equal opportunity to all children, regardless of background. These opportunity-crushing gaps tear at the fabric of America's social compact, especially as jobs requiring a strong mind rather than a strong back increasingly become the avenue for individual opportunity and national competitiveness.
There is no shortage of education-reform movements and proposals, some of them promising. Both Republicans and Democrats have embraced "standards-based reform," as embodied in President Bill Clinton's 1994 Improving America's Schools Act ...
Read the entire article in the summer 2007 issue of Democracy Journal.