As Campaign K-12 reports, last night's presidential debate was a bonanza for education. The candidates mentioned the word 21 times--which would look particularly impressive were it not for Joe the Plumber's 26 citations.
McCain claimed so last night, Obama disagreed, and now Fast Company's blog gets to the bottom of it (taking the analysis a step further than Marc Fisher in the
According to Joel Klein, former Wall Street execs have another option: the classroom. Guess, we'll have to wait and see math teacher alternative certification programs are overwhelmed with??Gordon Gekkos.
...is stupendous. I know we say this every week, but that's because we tend to routinely out-do ourselves. This week is no exception.
Mikyung RyuAmerican Council on EducationOctober 2008
Dan Lips and Matthew LadnerGoldwater InstituteSeptember 2008
As the Holy Rabbi would say, it could always be worse. While Bob Schieffer told the nation last night that our education system trails "most of the countries of the world," surely he didn't have Mexico in mind.
Extra chores, withheld desserts, and grounding may be going the way of poodle skirts and cherry coke floats if the latest installments in the Nebraska safe-haven law saga are any indication.
Everyone knows that this year's is a "change" election, and everyone also knows that our education system could benefit from some real change, too. I vote for reinserting history and related subjects back into the curriculum.
It's no military step routine for sure, but the recent federal suit filed by the New York City United Federation of Teachers is certainly out of step. At issue is a city policy that makes political buttons and signs verboten in schools.
Here's a riddle. You're the Secretary of Education. A deeply unpopular law is starting to label even good schools as failures. What do you do? Think positive! "Pretty much every organization needs improvement," Margaret Spellings told the New York Times this week. That's certainly true as far as it goes; even Gadfly tries to muscle-up his wings from time to time.
Oceans of ink and big chunks of cyberspace and the radio spectrum will be consumed, starting a few weeks hence, by speculation about who will or should or mustn't occupy key roles in the Presidential administration of John McCain or Barack Obama.
...I will. It's a safe bet that education won't be a big part of tonight's presidential debate, so if you need to ponder what an McCain or Obama administration should or could do, two NY Times blog entries from earlier this week have some interesting thoughts.
Wide-ranging presentations and lively discussion today at the AEI/Fordham conference on judicial involvement in education!
I admire Stafford's passion, in joining Mike's anti-Ed-in-???08 crusade, but I think she puts way too much stock in the
"Bush: Partial Nationalization Not An Abandonment of Free Market"
Conventional wisdom in Washington, circa 2001, was that states and schools were not to be trusted. Give them an inch, they'll take a mile--that was the sentiment when it came to devising NCLB's accountability system. We all knew that devious states would try to game the system and make schools look better than they really were, and that schools themselves would find loopholes and abuse them.
Ok, Eric caught me. I used the Washington Post-ABC News poll just to poke fun at??Ed in '08 again. With our current situation, someone would have to be off their rocker to list education as their top priority over the gazillion other things that are plaguing this country and the world.
Let's assume for a moment that the current trajectory of the presidential election remains the same and Obama wins by a significant margin, maybe even a landslide.
Sam Dillon has a great article in today's New York Times which illustrates the wide variation in the number of schools making "adequate yearly progress" under No Child Left Behind. He writes,
Richard Whitmire, who wrote this USA Today editorial in support of single sex schools, wants those of us at Fordham to send a video crew to the Excellence Charter S
Two weeks ago, I had a bit of fun at Ed in 08's expense. One of our readers accused me of unfairly picking on the poor initiative (get it?). Well, we could feel sorry for Ed in 08???
Readers are lighting up the comments section on this one regarding a comment made by "that one." (Note to John McCain: please try to remember your opponent's nam
A few weeks ago I introduced Barack Obama's scalpel to a list of what I referred to as "ineffective" Department of Education programs worthy of elimination.
With a title like that, we already know you RSVP'd (if you didn't, what are you waiting for?). More good news! The ten papers being presented at this stupendous conference are now posted online. Your weekend reading is all taken care of--you're welcome.
Fordham staff received an email this afternoon from D.C. parent Jean Hoff and decided to post it (in part, and with her permission):
On this Yom Kippur, Checker Finn atones for his Nixonian associations by highlighting the dire straits of America's urban parochial schools. Read it here.
A friend pointed me to this New York Times column by Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, wherein he states:
