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Education News for Friday, July 21

Deal reached on vocational education law – The demand for better high schools grows with each new report on flagging test scores, alarming dropout rates and ill-prepared graduates. (more)

Keeping hope alive – Investor’s Business Daily (subscription required) – President Bush told the NAACP that poor parents should have school choice for their kids. Liberals are warming to the idea. (more)

Utah: School voucher fans on attack again – A former state Republican lawmaker, who is trying to regain her House seat, said Wednesday that the same pro-voucher activists who cost her the election two years ago have now attacked her in the primary. (more)

Al Sharpton on Bush’s NAACP speech – (Fox News) What happens to the majority of students that cannot deal with public education charter schools? The job of American presidents is to give quality education to everybody. Not select few that can choose their way out of a bad school. (more)

When activism masquerades as education – New York City’s ideal of public schooling as a means of assimilating all children into a common civic culture is under assault – not by teachers who care too little, but by those who, in a perverse way, care too much. (more)

Young Latinas and a cry for help – NYT: About one-quarter of Latina teens drop out, a figure surpassed only by Hispanic young men, one-third of whom do not complete high school. (more)

Check back later for more education news.

UPDATE:

Bush vows to patch up his ties to the NAACP – Noting that the GOP has turned off black voters, he gets a chilly reception as he mentions taxes, faith-based initiatives and school vouchers. (more)

Ed Week: E.D. spending would drop again under Senate panel’s plan – (subscription required) The measure would provide $55.8 billion in discretionary funding for the department in fiscal 2007, about $175 million below last year’s allocation, according to a Senate Republican aide. (more)

Ed Week: High ranking Education Department official to step down– (subscription required)The departure of Thomas W. Luce III, the assistant secretary for the office of planning, evaluation, and policy development, comes the same month that another assistant secretary, Kevin F. Sullivan, leaves the department and starts a new job as White House communications director .. (more)

Help families with vouchers: For housing, not schools – (Iowa) Republicans in Congress, with backing from the administration, chose an awkward moment to propose spending $100 million on vouchers to help public-school students transfer into private schools. (more)

Chicago charter school mixes poor, well-off kids – In urban America, kids mostly mingle within their economic class; not so at the U. of C.’s new Donoghue School. (more)