- There are no fearsome beasts or rings of fire, but Marc Tucker’s newest jeremiad for Education Week is an apocalyptic prophecy worthy of a revival tent. Speculating on the origins of our collapsed standards, Tucker settles on four horsemen of academic mediocrity: grade inflation, the eroding prestige of the teaching profession, a standards movement hijacked by the accountability movement, and the consumer transformation of colleges and universities. Taken together, he claims, these factors have produced four decades of educational stagnation and a climate in which colleges teach high school math—and high schools teach grade grubbing. As Fordham’s own Chester Finn reminds us, we’ve been dumbing down our expectations for decades, and the results justify some doom saying.
- Like the rose that grew from concrete, the inimitable Dan Willingham has taken his talents over to the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet blog for a five-part series on reading. His terrific posts, of which three have been published so far, advance arguments from his new book. They will also raise points familiar to fans of Fordham’s own literacy guru, Robert Pondiscio. In the first, Willingham mounts a defense of the Common Core standards as a powerful catalyst for early literacy. By building a strong base of knowledge in subjects like science, social studies, and geography, he writes, the standards prepare young readers for a world of diverse texts. Robert’s been banging that drum so long (often by referring to Willingham’s research) that we only let him talk about baseball now. Editors at major newspapers: Who’s interested in an ongoing column focused on civics education and the National League East?
- In a perfect long read for the weekend, Commonwealth Magazine offers a thorough and bracing take on the New York Mets of state education outcomes, Massachusetts. After enacting landmark reform legislation more than twenty years ago and passing a sorely needed update in 2010 (note to Congress: Renew your education laws), the state famously leapt from middling academic performance to front-runner status. It still oversees pockets of persistently disappointing school failure, however, in economically troubled cities like Lawrence and Springfield. The article provides a great look at the new Republican governor’s efforts to deal with the familiar issues of poverty, high-stakes testing, and turnaround schools.
