Washington Post writer George Will is sharp as a tack, which is why he ends today's column, about David Whitman's new book, thusly: "Today's liberals favor paternalism--you cannot eat trans fats; you must buy health insurance--for everyone except children.
Author Charles Edward Chapel writes in Guns of the Old West, "Considerably cared for and used with skill, a gun would argue loud and persuasively for you against man and nature when both were hell-bent on your immediate personal destruction." Perhaps the chaw-spittin' school board in Harrold, Texas, has recently been reading Chapel--it just voted to allow the town's teachers to carry p
Center on Education PolicyAugust 2008
Charles MurrayCrown Forum2008
The usually sensible Washington Post editorial board sizes up the presidential candidates' education platforms in
Earlier this month I argued that the Democratic Party was no longer a fully-owned subsidiary of the NEA and the AFT.
The New York City program that pays students for good scores on AP exams yielded "mixed results," according to the New York Times. Education Trust President Kati Haycock, commenting on the program's philosophy,??gets the article's last words:
Just weeks after the loss of one if its leading literary lights, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russia took two golds and a silver in three PIRLS reading events. Team USA, meanwhile, has two days left to secure its first medal. Can they pull it out? Stay tuned at edolympics.net.
Writing is the most difficult challenge for students participating in a two-year, pilot, after-school science program being conducted in nine schools in central and north-central Ohio.
More than 1,000 preschool and K-12 students with Autism are now using an Ohio state-sponsored scholarship program that provides an educational option for parents dissatisfied with the services their child is receiving in a traditional public school.
Invisible Ink in Collective Bargaining: Why Key Issues are Not AddressedNational Council on Teacher QualityJuly 2008
Next week the state will release its school-district report cards-although districts are leaking their data already (see here), detailing how well Ohio's public schools are meeting academic standards, including how many high-school students passed the Ohio Gr
Expanded Learning Time in ActionTaking Stock of the Fiscal Costs of Expanded Learning TimeCenter for American ProgressJuly 2008
The Public-Private Collaborative Commission delivered this week its report, Supporting Student Success: A New Learning Day in Ohio (see here).
Politico is reporting that Senator McCain will announce his vice presidential pick on August 29th in Dayton, Ohio (Fordham's hometown). We can't help but wonder whether that means that McCain is going with an Ohioan.
Today Roy Romer--formerly governor of Colorado and superintendent of Los Angeles Public Schools, and currently chairman of the Ed in '08 campaign--joins us to discuss Team USA's heretofore dismal performance in the 2008 Education Olympics.
Once in awhile, I take the time to sniff around and find an education study worth talking about in this blog. I wish I had the time to do it more often, but judging from my quick look-see this afternoon, the research terrain isn't overflowing with milk and honey these days anyway.
Introducing Monday's uber-wonk special: Tom Loveless vs. Gregory Camilli on high-achieving students in the era of NCLB! This one has it all: "straw man" accusations; differing interpretations of NAEP; and, rest assured, a happy ending on "common ground."
During Saturday's "Saddleback civil forum" with candidates Barack Obama and John McCain,
Augustine Romero defends the Tucson Unified School District's Mexican American/Raza Studies Department (read about it here), of which he is the senior director.
The Education Olympics resume after a weekend hiatus--for some competitors, that is. Students from Finland and Hong Kong were spotted engaging in some last-minute cramming, while the Americans played Nintendo Wii. The outcome was predictable. Complete results at edolympics.net.
Jay Mathews thinks David Whitman's new book, released by Fordham on Friday, is "splendid," but he doesn't like the subtitle.
At least that's how I imagine it. As displaced students return to the Big Easy, the 2008-2009 school year will prove to be mighty interesting. Since Katrina washed away the school system, New Orleans is in a unique situation: it gets to start from scratch.
I'm just going to assume that the last couple paragraphs of Jay Mathews's column today are tongue in cheek. He thinks that the word "paternalism" is loaded enough that it has a negative effect on the largely positive work of attitudinal schools like KIPP and its ilk. Fine.
The most exciting innovation in education policy in the last decade is the emergence of highly effective schools in our nation's inner cities, schools where disadvantaged teens make big gains in academic achievement. In this book, David Whitman takes readers inside six of these secondary schools—many of them charter schools—and reveals the secret to their success: They are paternalistic.
Today Fordham proudly releases David Whitman's latest book, Sweati
Much of the disagreement caused by the use of the term paternalism in David Whitman's new book stems, I think, from a reticence to acknowledge reality.
