New York Sun

In a sign of how substantially her thinking on school policy has evolved, the education historian Diane Ravitch this week is engaging in an online debate with one of her oldest friends and collaborators, the education policy analyst Chester Finn Jr.

A New York college is putting a new twist on early admissions, creating an instant, on-the-spot evaluation that allows students to learn whether they have been admitted 24 hours after showing their high school transcripts.

Harvard Researchers Detail Costs of Delaying School
That's the message of a new paper by Harvard researchers, who warn that there is a downside to the increasingly common practice of waiting until children are 6 to enroll them in kindergarten.

Having been elected president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten is saying she has no current plans to leave her other job as president of the AFT's New York City local, the United Federation of Teachers.

If elected president, Senator McCain would support private school vouchers, give full funding to the federal No Child Left Behind law, and push for an expansion of "virtual schools," the Republican candidate said yesterday in unveiling his education plan during a speech to the NAACP.

Senator Obama is saying decisively that he does not support private school vouchers, while sticking with his support for incentive pay for teachers based on their students' performance.

By ELIZABETH GREEN
Employees at the city Department of Education's press office have a new assignment: They are to scour a group of 24 education Web logs, e-mail Listservs, and Web sites in a hunt for factual errors and misinformation. Department officials are calling the unit the Truth Squad.

By ELIZABETH GREEN
A top adviser to the state Education Department is pushing Albany education officials to scour their test results for possible score inflation. So far, state officials are not biting.

By ANDREW WOLF
When one digs into the testing data released by the State Education Department earlier this week, one comes up with some surprises. The huge across the board gains in the statewide math and English language arts tests would suggest that all children should be doing better. But one group seems to be adrift when it comes to the English test.

By ELIZABETH GREEN
Today is the last day of class for public school students in the city, which is good news for students, but, according to one of the country's most decorated school superintendents, bad news for their academic performance.

By ELIZABETH GREEN
Mayor Bloomberg will announce an education victory today: Test scores are up across the city, by double digits at some schools. But a cloud is already gathering, as education experts are raising the possibility that these gains and others across the country could suggest score inflation and not real learning gains.

Families that had expected to receive news in the mail about the gifted and talented programs that accepted their children instead received a surprise: The results were delivered over the weekend by a fleet of hired couriers driving black vans.

Rev. Sharpton said on his radio show that he received a telephone call from a union leader after his announcement that he is starting a new education group with school leaders who have called teachers unions obstacles to improvements.

'I wish that there were more of you' Faust Tells Five
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — For a little less than an hour yesterday, Harvard dedicated itself to honoring those graduates who have opted to serve America as members of the military.

Portraits of George Washington and photos of the Brooklyn Bridge will be arriving at every New York City public school this summer, courtesy of a new initiative that aims to expose students to great American art.