Crash Course: Imagining a Better Future for Public Education
Chris Whittle, Riverhead PressSeptember 2005
Chris Whittle, Riverhead PressSeptember 2005
EdSourceAugust 2005
In "The Dems Go Back to School," (Gadfly, September 1, 2005) you refer to the "loopy left arguments" of Richard Rothstein who, you claim, "declare[s] education improvement impossible until poverty is eradicated."
Will all high school students in the state of Maine pass through a Kaplan test-prep course on their way to graduation? The Boston Globe reports that the land of the lobster may soon swap its Maine Educational Assessment test for the SAT. If adopted, the state would pay for every 11th grade student to take the test once.
Breaking news: civil rights groups disagree on NCLB. Though John Jackson, the NAACP's national director of education, tells Education Week, "Unity is always best," it is proving elusive.
Last week, Americans watched in horror as governments at all levels failed to provide the basic necessities for our fellow citizens; this week Americans watched with pride as educators at all levels sprung into action to help cope with the human devastation in Katrina's wake.
Slate's Michael Kinsley once said that "a gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth." Well, Rafe Esquith is no politician (though we'd vote for him in a heartbeat; as a 5th grade teacher in Los Angeles he's been producing near-miraculous results with his charges for two decades), and his truth-telling was far from an accident, yet it's startling all the same: "Some children
Jonathan Kozol has spent decades hunting for inequities in American education, and his tune - which is 99 percent off key - hasn't changed much over the years.
It's a bit shocking to read that almost two-thirds of Americans recently told a poll-taker that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools. Forty-two percent of respondents self-identified as creationists and almost certainly voted in favor of teaching the idea. But how does one explain the others who voiced support?