The Daily Report Card: Testing Taboos, Higher Education’s Building Boom

Testing Taboos: The 50 Topics Banned From Standardized Exams American schools have a long history of banning controversial books, but it turns out that standardized tests ban words, too—and not just the four-letter kind. New York City’s Department of Education maintains a list of more than 50 words and topics that are prohibited from appearing on standardized tests administered to the city’s students. (Good)

10 years after Zelman, challenges still loom for voucher advocates Ten years after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Cleveland voucher program, state judges are still sending conflicting signals about the viability of private school choice. The latest setback for choice proponents took place last week in Oklahoma, where a Tulsa County judge ruled that a voucher for students with special needs violated the state’s constitutional prohibition of public money for sectarian institutions. (edexcellence.net)

Still In Residence: Arts Education In U.S. Public Schools There is a somewhat common argument in education circles that the focus on math and reading tests in No Child Left Behind has had the unintended consequence of generating a concurrent deemphasis on other subjects. This includes science and history, of course, but among the most frequently-mentioned presumed victims of this trend are art and music. A new report by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) presents some basic data on the availability of arts instruction in U.S. public schools between 1999 and 2010. (shankerblog.org)

Despite massive budget cuts, there’s a building boom in U.S. higher education An unprecedented multibillion-dollar building boom is under way at U.S. universities and colleges—despite budget shortfalls, endowment declines and seemingly stretched resources. Some $11 billion in new facilities have sprung up on American campuses in each of the last two years—more than double what was spent on buildings a decade ago, according to the market-research firm McGraw-Hill Construction—even as schools are under pressure to contain costs. (hechingerreport.org)