Perched atop a soap box in the New York Daily News, United Federation of Teachers boss (and upcoming AFT chieftain) Randi Weingarten steps up her ongoing assault on logic and reason. Schools Chancellor Joel Klein wants to consider student test scores when awarding tenure to teachers. Almost everybody in the real world (i.e., outside the field of education) concurs.
Regarding the April 17th story, "Failing schools usually are," the research is consistent and clear: there is a low statistical correlation between the performance of schools measured by point-in-time, year-end test scores (as used in NCLB to measure "Adequate Yearly Progress") and those measured by ho
Seems Australia's new government has pulled a bait and switch, promising citizens Down Under significant education reform and then forgetting about most of it.
You have to hand it to U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and her team: they are hardly dawdling during their Administration's closing months.
NewSchools Venture Fund & FSG Social Impact AdvisorsMarch 2008
Denial of hard facts and unwelcome implications runs the gamut. At its outer edge, we find a few sorely misguided folks denying that the Holocaust occurred, doubting the wickedness of Stalin, contending the greatness of Lincoln. Once upon a time, the Catholic Church denied Galileo's discovery that the planets revolve around the sun.
In the United Kingdom today, over 8,000 schools were shut down by a strike of the National Union of Teachers, angry because its members' pay, which has risen 19 percent in real terms since 1997, is scheduled for only a 2.45 percent bump next year. Thus, no school for little Nigel.
Finally, we know what separates great teachers from their more-middling peers: "unconditional love." So writes educator Mark Ryan in an op-ed for The Arizona Republic, a respected newspaper that doesn't usually print pieces about love, joy, sunshine, and kittens. But this is a time of hope, we're told, and Ryan's article fits the bill.
Marvin's and Mike's mothers coordinated on the phone last night before laying out their sons' outfits. (Click the photo for a bigger version.)
Anticipating tomorrow's White House summit on inner-city children and faith-based schools, former Secretary of Education William J.
Yesterday, on the Wall Street Journal's expanded opinion pages, Alan Ehrenhalt reviewed Bill Bishop's new book, The Bi
One of Thomas Sowell's points, that college education is being watered down because too many people are obtaining it, is a fine one.
The obvious rejoinder to Mike's post is that when people cluster in "communities of sameness, among people with similar ways of life, beliefs and in the end, politics," they also cluster among people of the same race and socioeconomic status.
Mike tells me (as he runs out the door to catch a flight) that he's already answered my question about standards and tests thusly:
You have to hand it to U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and her team: they are hardly dawdling during these last months of the Administration.
