- The Republicans are now in charge on Capitol Hill, and they’ve set their sights on No Child Left Behind. Politico reports that the chairmen of the education committees—Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Representative John Kline of Minnesota—have made it clear that an overhaul is in order. And what that likely means is a significantly reduced federal role in education. Gadfly is sanguine about that—but keep the annual testing, please.
- It’s been a busy month in the world of Ohio charter schools. The end of 2014 brought about two Fordham-sponsored reports urging reform in the beleaguered sector: Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) study Charter School Performance in Ohio and Bellwether Education Partners’ The Road to Redemption: Ten Policy Recommendations for Ohio's Charter School Sector. Both made big splashes in myriad Ohio media outlets, such as the Columbus Dispatch, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Toledo Blade, Youngstown Vindicator, and Akron Beacon Journal. They also attracted the attention of charter school experts and Ohio’s Governor Kasich. Couple that with an encouraging slowdown in the number of new charter schools in the state (authorizers are becoming choosier), and 2015 looks bright for schools of choice in the Buckeye State.
- Over the last ten years, the Chinese government, via an entity called Hanban, has set up 1,100 state-run Confucius Institutes to teach Chinese language and culture in schools worldwide. Last month, Hanban Director-General Xu Lin admitted to the BBC that the organization intentionally exports the Chinese Communist Party’s values. Editors at the Wall Street Journal rightly worry about the implications for academic freedom; our own Checker Finn has said that schools shouldn’t participate. This report coincided with a startling profile in the New York Times of a Chinese “test-prep factory,” where head teachers work seventeen-hour days and students are encouraged to train around the clock for China’s national college-entrance exam, the sole criterion for college admission. The College Board’s David Coleman reportedly said that Hanban is “like the sun. It lights the path to develop Chinese teaching in the U.S.” Chinese policies seem more like a black hole to us.
