October 8, 1997
Education Week, Vol. 17, Issue 06
Education
The Jewel in the Crown
Once a school on the slide, P.S. 161 in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood has taken wing with hard work, fresh thinking, and a reading program that marries phonics and whole language.
Education
Opinion
Charles: Write-Off or Reader?
At its best, "barrier analysis" is an invaluable tool for
understanding what the playing field looks like--a kind of
topographical map of the potholes and pitfalls that Charles is facing.
But in its more deterministic versions, barrier analysis is not
friendly to a boy like Charles. It activates fears in the public
mind--like a point spread stacked steeply against an underdog.
It implies that children are little more than the sum of their
sociological characteristics.
Standards
Opinion
Standards Reform Run Amok
For the last decade or so reformers have tried to improve American
schools through the use of educational standards. The standards
movement was initiated to overcome problems created by America's
fragmented governance system. This system sends so many contradictory
messages to teachers that it is hard to know what is important.
Now--after backlashes in California, Texas, and other states--the whole
standards movement may be in jeopardy because too much fragmentation
allows opponents to undermine efforts to set challenging standards for
all children.
Education
Opinion
Sometimes 'Equal' Means 'Different'
The debate over single-sex education is heating up again. The office
for civil rights of the U.S. Department of Education has informally
notified New York City Schools Chancellor Rudy F. Crew that an
all-girls leadership academy, opened last year in East Harlem, appears
to violate Title IX, the federal statute that bars sex discrimination
in federally funded education programs. Federal officials have
suggested that a possible solution might be to admit boys to the school
or to open a "comparable" all-boys school at a nearby location. The
chancellor has publicly rejected both proposals, threatening to take
the case to federal court if necessary. However this stalemate is
resolved, the resolution will reverberate far beyond the borders of New
York.