Educators, researchers, and policy types around the world admire (and envy) Finland's students, who repeatedly demonstrate remarkable academic prowess on international assessments.
Visiting the LBJ Ranch in the Texas hill country this weekend, our ad hoc tour group included a gaggle of high-school students from "south of Houston." They generally seemed pleasant, self-conscious, goofy and teenager-ish.
Yes, indeed, there are rifts nowadays, rifts almost as wide as the Great Rift Valley within both political parties when it comes to education policy, particularly at the national level. That's probably necessary, as both parties go through some soul-searching and repurposing.
Eight months into the Obama administration, the White House has been mute on its intentions regarding the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act, George W.
At “The Quick and the Ed,” Kevin Carey has offered an intriguing if somewhat peculiar response to my and Rick Hess’s piece in the Education G
How do you feel about the government of China paying for American public schools to teach our kids Mandarin? And sending teachers from China to the U.S.
How do you feel about the government of China paying for American public schools to teach our kids Mandarin? And sending teachers from China to the U.S.
"Greg Anrig is smart, eloquent and likable, as was his dad, whose memory I cherish.
I deny that I’m in denial. But I don’t deny that Neal McCluskey is paranoid, along with Jay Greene and a few other ardent blogsters and op-edsters.
Ever since The Education Gadfly critically reviewed NYC Schools Under Bloomberg and Klein: What Parents, Teachers, and Policymakers Need to Know, we've been bombarded with messages from aggrieved contributors and editors of that 172-page volume (which you can find
The public draft of the Common Core State Standards is considerably improved from the version that was circulated two months back and it’s evident that the drafters are trying to incorporate responsible feedback. I trust they will continue to.
Bees really dislike having their hive disturbed and that's obviously true of universal-pre-school advocates, too. The Pew-backed advocacy squad has picked Steve Barnett of the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) as their designated hit-man to go after me and my new book.
"A lot of normally smart and generally sincere people have just made the dreadful blunder of affiliating themselves with Al Sharpton, one of America's more unlovable figures, whose fingerprints can be found on an appalling list of divisive, racist, anti-Semitic, violent, and often bloody episodes over the past quarter century...." Read it
More than anyone else who comes to mind in American public life, Edward M. Kennedy ascended from reprobate to icon, from an object of criticism, even ridicule, to statesman. He made many lasting marks on our policies and politics and just about everyone came to admire and like him. Generations of devoted and able staffers.
"Some days our blog exhausts me. Not writing for it--I'm usually too busy--just reading it and thinking how I would have said something differently myself or would have bitten my tongue and said nothing at all...." Read it here.
The worst education idea of the year turns out not to be a new idea at all. "Unschooling" has roots in Rousseau, in Summerhill, in John Holt and Ivan Illich and any number of other progressive/romantic/libertarian nihilists.
"Finally. At long last. A group of serious analysts, commissioned by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, has concluded that NBPTS needs to include student learning gains in its evaluation of teacher quality!..." Read it here.
Earlier this summer, Terry wrote about the disconnect between DC and the states when it comes to education policy. 
Last week, Cleveland Metropolitan School District CEO Eugene Sanders unveiled a major plan to transform the district, Ohio’s second-largest and one in dire need 
A central Ohio church has appealed the Ohio Department of Education’s denial of its application to become a charter school authorizer…It is true that no churches serve as authorizers in Ohio, but church-related organizations are certainly active in the charter sector with the knowledge and approval of the state….Read it
The Cleveland Teachers Union (CTU) has launched a campaign to unionize the city’s charter schools....What benefit would a district have in encouraging students to leave the public school system and let a charter school operator educate the district’s children? What is in it for CMSD? For starters, how about better-educated students?
Ohio's congressional delegation has been boasting about the infusion of money the Buckeye State's public schools would receive from the federal stimulus package.
Yesterday in the Ohio Senate Education Committee, school funding expert and Buckeye (OSU class of '66 and '72) Paul Hill offered testimony about how Ohio can go about reforming its system of school funding while at the same time raising studen
In the midst of the school-funding battle here in the Buckeye State, it is easy to lose sight of the other major education reforms on
In today's State of the State address, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland clarified his position on charter schools: "For those who may have misunderstood my position on charter schools, I want to be very clear.
School-choice foes in the Buckeye State are getting smarter about the strategies they employ to undermine the choice movement. Since the birth of charters here in 1998 and vouchers in 2005, opponents--namely Democrats, teacher unions, and the education establishment--have fought a "districts = good, choice = bad" fight. But with Democrats, including the President, across the country
Mike wonders what President Obama's call for a new "era of responsibility" will mean for education, but I'm more curious about the impact of his call for Americans to "set aside ch
Ohio's charter school sector is a bit like Night of the Living Dead, or so says Fordham's Terry Ryan in this Dayton Daily News
Yesterday Fordham’s hometown paper, the Dayton Daily News, ran a piece about Teach For America, as did the New York Times on Sunday.
Reading results from NAEP’s Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) have been released, and the news for Cleveland fourth and eighth graders isn’t much better than when
