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Clearly our emphasis on testing and the consequent narrowing of the curriculum contributes to the problem.  School have, as George Wood of the Forum for Education and Democracy notes, "a perverse incentive to allow or encourage students to leave" especially if they are likely to be low scorers on the tests by which schools are evaluated.  Anyone who doubts this need merely look at the track record of Texas during the Governorship of George W. Bush, when its claimed remarkable improvements in state test scores later became the basis of the perversely named legislation No Child Left Behind.  In Texas, sometimes students were held back in 9th grade multiple times because the state tests were given in 10th.  After a second holding back students might be encouraged to leave, hiding the dropout rate by listing the child as having gone to an alternative educational program because s/he said s/he might eventually get a GED.  Or after being held back once, the child would be told s/he had made so much progress s/he was being skipped directly to 11th, and thus not tested.  Rod Paige became U. S. Secretary of Education, after being honored as supposedly the best Superintendent in the nation by a professional organization, largely on claims of more than a 90% graduation rate in Houston schools, at a time when only around 40% of those who entered in 7th grade graduated on time with their cohort.  Those forced out or held back and then skipped were heavily from poor families that were African-American or Hispanic.

Each time charter schools become an issue, I check my internal barometer to see how I feel about the issue. My children have graduated from Seattle Public Schools and have gone on to pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees. I have pretty much pulled away from public life since my last child left for college and the school board I helped elect was ousted by powerful private interests.

In today's knowledge‐based economy, education-especially education beyond high school-is central to achieving the American Dream. Yet, recent research points to devastating statistics related to educational outcomes in the nation's communities of color.  For example, only 54 percent of Native American students will graduate high school on‐time. Half of today's African American and Latino eighth‐graders will drop out of high school before graduation. And, only 10 percent of African‐American and Latino eighth grade students will complete any sort of college degree. While Asian American student outcomes are seemingly high compared to other students of color, this is not true for all Asian groups. Within the Southeast Asian community, 34 percent of Laotian, 39 percent of Cambodian, and 40 percent of Hmong adults do not have a high school diploma or equivalent.

"For years, educators and children's advocates have pointed out that educating poor children requires more time and resources.  By simply pointing out this fact, they have been accused of "making excuses."  Former President George W. Bush accused them of engaging in "the soft bigotry of low expectations."  The "no excuses" crowd chimed in that poverty should never be an excuse for a lack of student success - and that only poor teachers or schools should bear such responsibility. I don't agree with those claims. Poverty should not be used as an excuse for a child not succeeding in school, but its effects should not be ignored either. I will admit that we, as a school district, operate on our own type of "no excuses" premise.  We believe we should try with every student, every day, to overcome any and all obstacles to learning.  Our commitment shows up in our graduation rate, which is regularly higher than 95 percent, and the fact that every one of our students who applies to college (more than 70 percent of our graduates) is accepted in one or more colleges. So when it comes to children, I suppose I am in favor of a "no excuses" mantra.  But my mantra is different. It extends beyond the walls of our public school classrooms."

Steven Brill is a graduate of Yale Law School and the founder of Court TV, and in his new book, "Class Warfare," he brings a sharp legal mind to the world of education reform. Like a dogged prosecutor, he mounts a zealous case against America's teachers' unions. From more than 200 interviews, he collects the testimony of idealistic educators, charter school founders, policy gurus, crusading school superintendents and billionaire philanthropists. Through their vivid vignettes, which he pieces together in short chapters with titles like " 'Colorado Says Half of You Won't Graduate' " and "A Shriek on Park Avenue," Brill conveys the epiphanies, setbacks and triumphs of a national reform movement.

Before relocating to Austin, I had spent eight years teaching math and/or science in Egypt, Mexico and Honduras at elite private schools that used American textbooks, American curriculum and were accredited by American institutions.  The majority of my students were not Americans, but graduated with a combination of diplomas: local, American and/or IB (International Baccalaureate). After graduation, nearly all attended college, mostly in the US, Canada and England, and a few remained in their own country for higher education. I proudly returned to the US, toting my international bag of creative, engaging teaching tricks, especially curriculum-based projects that I had created, ready to dazzle my American students. So, imagine my utter shock when resettling into American life, teaching at an Austin public high school, and discovering that the standards were actually lower. Moreover, my teaching creativity was all but stifled for the sake of "standardization" in the most controlling environment I had ever taught.

There will be no courses at the Relay Graduate School of Education, the first standalone college of teacher preparation to open in New York State for nearly 100 years. Instead, there will be some 60 modules, each focused on a different teaching technique. There will be no campus, because it is old-think to believe a building makes a school. Instead, the graduate students will be mentored primarily at the schools where they teach. And there will be no lectures. Direct instruction, as such experiences will be called, should not take place for more than 15 or 20 minutes at a time. After that, students should discuss ideas with one another or reflect on their own.

"As high school seniors all across the country graduated this week, history was quietly being made in Washington, D.C. at the Department of Education for 23 D.C. public school students with developmental and intellectual disabilities. They, like their peers across the country, were graduating too. They all participated in a program called Project SEARCH. The 15-year-old program now operates in 39 states and four foreign countries, but this is the first year that the federal government has hosted the project in three agencies including the Departments of Education, Labor and Health and Human Services."

In Washington Heights, graduates of Stuyvesant High School and the Bronx High School of Science run the Science Schools Initiative, a yearlong free tutoring program held for three hours every Saturday morning. To qualify, students must show promise on a diagnostic exam and meet the city's benchmark for poverty. "The whole point of this thing is basically to get economically disadvantaged kids into these schools," said Mr. Cleary, who until recently was the program's executive director. "I'm not looking to hit a certain number; I'm looking for some equilibrium."

Mayor Bloomberg likes to boast of the "gains" made in city schools during his tenure, but the test scores and graduation rates he cites have long been suspect. Want to know why? As Susan Edelman reported in last Sunday's Post, the folks at struggling Washington Irving HS in Manhattan apply a major, um, fudge factor.

"In the Michael Bloomberg era of school reform, we hear a lot about rising educational standards. "When Dennis Walcott became chancellor," Josh Thomases, a deputy chief academic officer in the city's Department of Education, tells the Voice, "one of his first acts was to say the correct bar was no longer a high school diploma, but career and college readiness." Put another way, New York City officials openly admit that a high school diploma earned in our public schools today does not mean that a student is ready for college. In fact, 80 percent of New York public school graduates who enrolled in City University of New York community colleges last fall still needed high school level instruction-also known as remediation-in reading, writing, and especially math. Despite the department's proclamations, that percentage is up, not down, from 71 percent a few years ago."

This book aims to inform the policy debate by examining four primary research questions in several geographic locations: (1) What are the characteristics of students transferring to charter schools? (2) What effect do charter schools have on test-score gains for students who transfer between TPSs and charter schools? (3) What is the effect of attending a charter high school on the probability of graduating and of entering college? (4) What effect does the introduction of charter schools have on test scores of students in nearby TPSs? We  examine similarities and diferences in the answers to these questions across locations, seeking insights about the policy levers that might be available to improve the outcomes associated with charter schools.

Our guest author today is Dr. Clifford B. Janey, former superintendent for the Newark Public Schools, District of Columbia Public Schools, and Rochester City School District. He is currently a Senior Weismann Fellow at the Bankstreet College of Education in New York City, and a Shanker Institute board member. For too many students, families, and communities, the high school diploma represents either a dream deferred or a broken contract between citizens and the stewards of America's modern democracy. With the reform movement's unrelenting focus on testing and its win/lose consequences for students and staff, the high school diploma, which should signify college and work readiness, has lost its value. Not including the over seven thousand students who drop out of high school daily, the gap between the percentage of those who graduate and their readiness for college success will continue to worsen the social and income inequalities in life.

"New York state published a list of schools based on measures like test scores and graduation rates. At the top are "reward" schools. At the bottom are "priority" schools. This is the amazing discovery. The schools that enroll mostly white and Asian students in affluent neighborhoods are doing a great job; they get a reward. The schools that enroll mostly black and Hispanic students in poor neighborhoods are doing a bad job; they are in line to get sanctions, interventions."

The conventional wisdom among many education commentators is that U.S. public school teachers "come from the bottom third" of their classes. Most recently, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg took this talking point a step further, and asserted at a press conference last week that teachers are drawn from the bottom 20 percent of graduates. All of this is supposed to imply that the U.S. has a serious problem with the "quality" of applicants to the profession. Despite the ubiquity of the "bottom third" and similar arguments (which are sometimes phrased as massive generalizations, with no reference to actual proportions), it's unclear how many of those who offer them know what specifically they refer to (e.g., GPA, SAT/ACT, college rank, etc.). This is especially important since so many of these measurable characteristics are not associated with future test-based effectiveness in the classroom, while those that are are only modestly so. Still, given how often it is used, as well as the fact that it is always useful to understand and examine the characteristics of the teacher labor supply, it's worth taking a quick look at where the "bottom third" claim comes from and what it might or might not mean.

The U.S. Education Department is offering the waivers to states that adopt an "index" system of multiple measures that go beyond annual test results in determining school performance. These include test score growth over time, graduation rates and other evidence that schools have produced students who are college- or career-ready. States also must show plans for evaluating teachers and principals by multiple measures.

Yet the summary report from the evaluators has no mention of the 75% attrition rate. What readers were told was, "Enrolling in (read as "being exposed to") a private high school through MPCP increases the likelihood of a student graduating from high school, enrolling in a four-year college and persisting in college by 4-7 percentage points." That sounds positive, and voucher advocates have trumpeted this statement. But a more defensible statement is that there are no findings of benefits that are statistically distinguishable from zero. Here's why: After controlling both for students' prior measured achievement and for differences in the level of parents' formal education, to ensure that comparable students were being compared, none of the benefits showcased by the evaluators are statistically significant using conventional significance criteria.

Part of the American Graduate project addressing the country's high school dropout crisis, Ray Suarez and former Deputy Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch discuss education reform and her approach to teacher accountability.

States are bracing for plummeting high school graduation rates as districts nationwide dump flawed measurement formulas that often undercounted dropouts and produced inflated results.

We study the impact of a public school choice lottery in Charlotte-Mecklenburg (CMS) on postsecondary attainment. We match CMS administrative records to the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), a nationwide database of college enrollment. Among applicants with low-quality neighborhood schools, lottery winners are more likely than lottery losers to graduate from high school, attend a four-year college, and earn a bachelor's degree. They are twice as likely to earn a degree from an elite university. The results suggest that school choice can improve students' longer-term life chances when they gain access to schools that are better on observed dimensions of quality.