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A report on the first year of the District of Columbia’s private school voucher program suggests no statistically significant impact on math and reading scores for participating students.
The was the first federally-funded voucher initiative in the nation. It was established in 2005 and is a five year pilot project providing eligible low-income students with public funding to attend a private school.
The results, although disappointing to supporters of publicly-funded voucher programs, are viewed as an early snapshot of the DC program and more evaluation is required.
A book from the Economic Policy Institute looks at the relationship between vouchers and public school performance in the nation’s longest running voucher program in Milwaukee.
The findings suggest little or no improvement in public school students’ test scores following the expansion of the voucher program. The book does not look at the academic performance of students participating in the voucher program.
Last year Teach for America (TFA) launched a school leadership initiative with the goal of providing a clearer and smoother route to becoming a school principal for its alumni.
The school leadership initiative works in partnership with the school district and an educational program to train the budding principals. For example, TFA-Chicago has partnered with the Chicago school system and Harvard University’s graduate school of education in a tuition-free program which prepares principals for schools in one of Chicago’s toughest neighborhoods. A similar program exists in New Jersey where TFA has partnered with Newark school district and Rutgers University.
The US Department of Education has issued a report on a study which examines the characteristics of students participating in the two options mandated in the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)– supplemental educational services and school transfer – and the effect of those choices on student achievement.
Students from low-income families have two options under the NCLB law:
- If their school has failed to make for two consecutive years then they may transfer to another public school in their district not identified for improvement
- If their school fails to meet AYP in third or subsequent years parents can enroll their child in , such as tutoring or remediation with a state-approved provider which takes place out of school time.
Only five of the school districts produced sufficient data for use by the researchers. Those states showed that students who had received SES made gains in math and reading. The benefit increased with multiple years of SES.
The report could not show any statistically significant improvement for students who moved to another school within their district. However, the analysts cautioned against making concrete conclusions as the numbers studied were very low.
The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is the first district to use social networking websites and text messaging as part of a strategy to reduce the number of school dropouts.
The enterprise, entitled My Future, My Decision uses web-based networks such as YouTube and MySpace with students who had dropped out but then returned to education as communicators with their peers. Radio announcements include numbers which students can call to receive text messages with information on the ways to return to education and the benefits of doing so.
Two associations which represent 650 of the USA’s public colleges and universities are likely to approve a voluntary accountability system allowing for comparison of similar institutions.
Known as the , it consists of a common set of measures including cost, transfer and graduation rates, student satisfaction.and an assessment of student learning derived from the results of one of three tests.
The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities has proposed its own accountability system with private institutions including more detailed information on their websites – but they would not include data on student learning assessments.
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