I think in coed schools, the focus is on how you look; at the single sex school, the focus is more on who you are. And a very good case can be made that single-sex education is actually better preparation for the real world. Because in the real world being cute won’t get you very far, it won’t get you the kind of jobs you want. The focus on who you are is going to be a much more advantageous focus all around.

What kind of message does it give when you tell a group of kids that boys and girls need to be separated because they don’t even see or hear alike? Every time I hear of school officials selling single-sex programs to parents based on brain research, my heart sinks.

Girls are easy. They’re more traditional. They’re really into family relationships, so I try to make class more personal. Boys are harder. They’re always wanting to move around. But they’re into sports, so I try to bring in news articles to make class more interesting.

[Some single-sex schools] do seem to be having a positive impact for the predominantly low-income, minority students they serve. But that impact has at least as much to do with their rigorous academic approach, commitment to high-quality teaching, and shared culture of excellence as it has to do with the fact that they're single sex.

Policies that are going to purposely segregate students by race or gender or income or religion is antithetical to what American public education is supposed to be about, which is to bring children of different backgrounds together.

I was a principal of a Reading First school in Crab Orchard, Kentucky. I was eight years in that building, and I saw more progress with Reading First than anything I’ve seen in my 20 years in education. This process taught me how to be an instructional leader in my building.

We’re disappointed to see cuts to Reading First, a program that has a track record of proven results. With the Department of Education and Congress working throughout the last year to improve structural weaknesses in the program, it’s hard to understand why the program is now being cut so dramatically. Ultimately, the result of these cuts will be fewer resources to help children learn to read.

We all agree that the goal of the Reading First program -- to help all children learn to read -- is incredibly important. We must have every assurance that Reading First funding is being used as intended -- to benefit our nation's schoolchildren, not to line the pockets of Bush's cronies.

As it stands now, I don’t think Reading First should be funded at all. It imposes … heavy doses of phonemic awareness and intensive phonics, extremist approaches that are not supported by the research. It hasn’t worked, [and] there is evidence of serious corruption/conflict of interest in the awarding of Reading First funds.

Everyone's right. The Bush administration screwed up. The program is proven to be effective. And funds shouldn't have been cut.

In the coming weeks, I will take administrative steps to ensure that all states use the same formula to calculate how many students graduate from high school on time—and how many drop out.

The inflation of these graduation statistics is a national problem and instead of sweeping this news under the carpet, we need to roll up our sleeves and propose solutions to fix it.

You'll be frightened by the numbers you see. The trend is real, and it's a trend that has to be reversed.

I nearly choked on my breakfast when I read that figure in today's front-page story. Fewer than half of DISD [Dallas Independent School District] students graduate? I can't think of a more depressing statistic for school officials or city leaders. What does our future look like if the "leaders of tomorrow" aren't high school graduates?

This problem is not only manageable; it's solvable in a decade or less. We can locate the problem. It's not every school; it's not every student.

I can't imagine going through fifth grade, fourth, or third, and being denied recess time, I sort of lived for that as I recall.

They [middle school students] need time to blow off steam... The noise levels are down, the cafeteria is cleaner after the students leave, and we have had fewer discipline problems in the cafeteria this year as compared to last year.

Recess… is about freedom. Today, our kids’ lives are organized to the hilt. For that reason, what is most important about recess is that it is the only unstructured time in a long day for most children, who find themselves in classrooms where the No Child Left Behind Act requires a rigorous schedule of standardized-test preparation.

Children need to engage in games such as this in order to develop social skills, to learn to handle themselves, to avoid obesity, and to get the activities they need, and these are traditional games, going on for centuries.

As the only unstructured time during the school day when kids interact wholly with each other without supervision (possibly excluding lunch), recess is an essential part of growing up. Only through lost games, hurt feelings and skinned knees can children build the social skills and develop the emotional maturity that they will need as adults.

With a good physical education class you can teach children about what a healthy lifestyle should be, teach them how to care for their bodies now and in the future. There are certain skills and exercises they can't learn just by play.

I think we all have to join hands together and say, ‘Hey, put physical education in a fun way in the schools and the test scores will go up!’ Why not even try it? Give it a year, and I promise you the test scores will go up.

The problem is expanding exponentially. What used to be a bullying incident amongst six people in a high school hallway has now evolved into a national broadcast, a global broadcast, on the Internet.

The lines between home and school are continuing to blur with more expectations for schools to exercise authority in areas previously reserved for parents… I am leery of going too far and trying to regulate too much of private life, even though I abhor some of the things that kids put up on the Internet about each other.

It's a cycle that feeds upon itself, and schools need to view the inappropriate behavior—not technology—as the problem…With each technological advance we have had in history, people find ways to use it for harm.

I don't think schools are equipped to handle these kinds of matters… As a disruption occurs in school, then they would have the jurisdiction to get involved as it happens ... I would contend that the school had absolutely no jurisdiction.

As difficult as it may be to consider, parents and teachers alike need to talk about this subject at home and in the classroom. We need to raise awareness of this issue and be pro-active. At present, lawmakers are drafting laws to prevent and prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes. Education, vigilance, and strict laws are key in disarming bullies.

This just emphasizes the importance of adequate school funding. When we argue for additional resources to schools, we’re talking, in large part, about investing in a professional workforce. It’s unreasonable to expect quality teaching and high retention rates if we’re not willing to make salaries appealing to today’s smart college graduates who have plenty of lucrative career choices available to them.

If fiscal incentives matter, the first decision for a lot of people is going to be to go into a different field. People motivated by salaries will, rather than wanting to climb to the top of 88 cents on the dollar, go get the dollar itself. …We don’t have in place one of the essential preconditions to having an effective variable pay structure: adequate base compensation. As a result, you get a system where people are being driven to a large extent by the intrinsic rewards of the work, and by the external rewards that come from a kind of cult of teacherdom.

The best and most plausible strategy to increase total teacher pay, therefore, is not to raise the floor, but the ceiling—create a methodologically sound system for evaluating teacher effectiveness, in conjunction with labor, and then send the new money to the most effective teachers. Policymakers would go for that, really they would instead of more $40,000 teachers, more $140,000 teachers.

The Quality Counts survey hardly has the final word on sweeping questions of teacher pay. Some teachers are overpaid, some teachers are underpaid. Yet the system by and large isn’t constructed to reward them with incentives for success. Maybe, just maybe – as I’ve written before – reformers should consider advocating a reduction of the teaching workforce so we can afford to reward quality teaching effectively, a more efficient way to yield good results.

[The index] fails to account for the fact that teachers work about 9 months a year while architects, editors, etc. typically work a full 12 months. That's both unfair and misleading…And teachers, unlike the folks working in the 16 "comparable" professions, are not accountable for their on-their-job performance. Plus, QC doesn't seem to factor in benefits, which are enormously generous for educators. For all those reasons, a straight salary-to-salary comparison is therefore largely misleading.

"This report confirms what we already know. As compared to other states, our steady and positive improvement of academic achievement simply isn't enough" (News Star/Associated Press, January 10, 2008).

“We’re not defensive about this. We find it interesting and rather helpful. When we saw we got a D (in one category), even though you want to cringe, we kind of want to say, ‘You know what? This is helpful. This is a report that we think has integrity.’ And we would agree it is commensurate with where state legislators and policymakers—and where the Department of Education and the state board (of education)—think we also need to work” (Rocky Mountain News, January 10, 2008).

"I know we did not receive high scores in several of the categories, but I like the questions they are asking" (Providence Journal, January 10, 2008).

"I think the report reinforces in some ways what parents already know. Shining flashlights in areas that are dark and troubled is a good practice. These reports help us to understand how we're viewed by a third party" (Salt Lake Tribune, January 9, 2008).

"The whole grading system depends on how well your state aligns to their established criteria. I’m not being critical of this, but it’s always good to look at different resources and information. If you look at other factors, such as ACT scores, Missouri fares quite well." (Columbia Tribune, January 10, 2008).

"Once again, this report indicates that despite our highly regarded standards, California faces many challenges and must invest more and work harder to ensure all students are successful in achieving to those standards" (Whittier Daily News, January 14, 2008).

Unfortunately, due to a combination of limited foresight and inevitable political compromise, lawmakers just aren't very good at closing loopholes. And government agencies, such as the Department of Education, are even worse at it. Congress needs to put down the pens and pull out the scissors.

Although Carey’s research is quite critical of NCLB, it should be more generally read as a cautionary tale for both policy makers and supporters. The moral of the story is that standards should be applied equally to all states and tools such as peer review and precision about requirements and definitions are essential.

If you peek behind the curtain you will see that [the Pangloss Index] is in fact a lazy and useless piece of garbage intended only to fan the flames of panic among those inclined to believe the worst about public education and ‘educrats’… The whole thing is based on the absurd assumption that all positive data is wrong and all negative data is correct. Therefore, states that report good things get a high (bad) rating for ‘gaming’ the system and states that report bad things get a low (good) rating for being honest and accountable.

…unlike the fictional Pangloss, Wisconsin really isn't facing insurmountable evidence to the contrary. When you look at census data and national standardized test scores, you can confirm, outside of what we self-report, that Wisconsin's schools are pretty good… It seems likely that there will be another version of the Pangloss Index next year. And if Wisconsin continues to do a good job educating our children, expect to be told that we're gaming the system.

[Suggesting that Iowa is ‘gaming’ the system] …is really not fair, because we are using the flexibility that we are finding in the law to protect our schools and give them an opportunity to improve.

…if you let individuals or organizations define how they'll be publicly evaluated, this is what you get. People are people, and few are going to be reliably objective about owning up to their successes and failures in a neutral way, particularly when the stakes are high. That’s really what the Pangloss Index is all about.