Quotable & notable
?Unions should have every right to continue representing their members, speaking up for teachers as they negotiate salaries, professional development and benefits.'' * -Michelle Rhee, CEO and Founder of StudentsFirst
?Unions should have every right to continue representing their members, speaking up for teachers as they negotiate salaries, professional development and benefits.'' * -Michelle Rhee, CEO and Founder of StudentsFirst
It was standing room only yet again at Monday night's meeting of the board of education, of which I am a member, in our 2000-student upstate New York school district; nearly 200 people were jammed into the high school cafeteria when I arrived.? This was not good.
As I was writing up the account of my recent board meeting, I had to keep pinching myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming. ?And just at that moment, it seemed, there came a flurry of emails from a listserve I am a member of --?
Sometimes the right thing doesn't look great politically.
One of the reasons Candidate Obama was so appealing was his call for participants in our democracy to "disagree without being disagreeable." Though he hasn't always lived up to that standard, it's a worthy ob
Here's the "Statement of Administration Policy on H.R. 471 - Scholarships for Opportunity and Results Act."
?One thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching the test because then you're not learning about the world, you're not learning about different cultures, you're not learning about science, you're not learning about math.
Today, Jay Greene has an Ed Next column arguing against government mandated standards and curriculum. ?Most of the important elements of American education are already standardized,? he argues.
One of the many reasons I think that states should get out of the curriculum- and textbook-adoption business is that, when state governments start to dive too deep into the implementation weeds, they tend to do far more harm than good.
If you haven't yet, steer yourself over to the latest "Room for Debate" conversation at the New York Times, entitled ?How to Raise the Status of Teachers.? It features some excellent pieces, including one by Fordham's own Mike Petrilli.
As state and district education budgets shrink, it becomes doubly important to scrutinize line items, to think through cuts, and to trim fat in ways that won't negatively affect schoolchildren. Moore County, North Carolina seems to have missed that memo. ?The district is set to close one of its smaller elementary schools, Academy Heights.
This post appears today on the New York Times' Room for Debate blog. The question: How can the United States raise the status of teachers and teaching?
Barack Obama was at Bell Multicultural High School in Washington, D.C., today, answering education-related questions at an event organized by Univision. Responding to a question about standardized exams, the president said that pupils are currently tested too frequently and are under too much pressure to perform well on the high-stakes exams they're given.
Parents in Volusia County, Florida (it's always Florida, it seems) are picketing outside an elementary school that recently instituted several regulations to protect a six-year-old student who has a serious peanut allergy.
If Horace Mann was the key educational figure of the 19th century, and John Dewey of the first half of the 20th, then Al Shanker, the legendary leader of the American Federation of Teachers, deserves t
?Unfortunately, it is a characteristic of reform movements?for its participants to feel they are on the edge of history, solving with new ideas and new tools the problems that flummoxed everyone before..'' *
Last week, Justin Baeder at Ed Week's "On Performance" blog had a post arguing that adopting policies that force teachers to copy the teaching strategies of effective teachers is bound to fail.*
Catherine Gewertz (via John Fensterwald of the "Educated Guess" blog) has a post today about a group of seven California districts who are coming together to draft Common
It's Christmas in Rhode Island: the state Department of Education has released a comprehensive new set of financial data for district and charter schools throughout the state.
Well, it's official.? According to Sam Dillon in the NYT, Steve Barr and the charter organization he founded, Green Dot, are going their separate ways.? In fact, the separation has been long in coming.?
Though Deborah Meier's newest post on Bridging Differences is ostensibly about hypocrisy (she says she tells her left-wing friends that ?we should
The Wall Street Journal ran today an article about Portugal's rickety educational system and how it has affected the nation's economy: Portugal is the least educated country in Europe, and it is also the poorest. ?Without budget cuts,?
Readers will recall the appearance, in the summer of 2008, of an article in the Atlantic by a pseudonymous Professor X [insert X-Men joke here to flaunt pop-culture cred] that relayed his experience teaching basic English courses at two colleges, one a four-year, private instituti
Here's some food for thought: should toenails dictate what we should eat or should we leave it up
?The heroic efforts of both TFA and non-TFA teachers are motivated by the belief that all children can learn?but they do not negate truths like healthy children are better learners, or children with stable home environments and fewer distractions in their non-school lives are better able to take advantage of the educational opportunities afforded them.'' <
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, a prospective 2012 GOP presidential candidate, challenged Republicans to take a critical look at the defense budget earlier this month when he told a reporter in Iowa, ???Anybody who says you can't save money at the Pentagon has never been to the Pentagon.
One of the dirtiest words in American education today is ?tracking.? Reformers and ed-school types alike deride the approach as racist, classist, and worthy of eradication. And if they are talking about the practice of confining some kids?typically poor or minority or both?into dead-end tracks with soulless, ditto-driven instruction, they are absolutely right.
Some are less than pleased with Florida's governor, Rick Scott, who, it seems likely, let it be known to certain persons that he wanted a new state education commissioner. Eric Smith, the current commissioner, resigned this week, noting that he was leaving so Scott could have input ?on the type of leader to pursue his goals for education.?