In today's Wall Street Journal, we hear from college graduates who recognized a crummy job market and decided to channel their energies into service programs, like Teach for America. Great idea, right?
I'll ignore the rest of Leo Casey's EdWize post this morning in favor of this one comment:
You may remember that both Amber and Liam first alerted us to, and then wrote on, what's now being called the Gloucester pregnancy pact--that a group of sophomore girls in Gloucester, MA decided to get pregn
The baby boomers are on the way out of the nation's colleges and universities. The New York Times reports that liberal professors birthed into academia in the 1960s and 70s are retiring--and being replaced by younger and more politically moderate academics.
New Philadelphia schools CEO Arlene Ackerman is making an impression right away; the Philadelphia Inquirer reports:
NPR's Morning Edition aired today a segment on which presidential candidate, John McCain or Barack Obama, is actually the most bi-partisan or post-partisan or something like that. Frankly, I couldn't care less, mostly because these glorified labels are hooey.
The Gloucester, Massachusetts, principal who told Time that several students made a "pact" to get pregnant stands by his remarks. (Last week, Amber wrote a sharp Gadfly piece related to this subject.)
Julie Greenberg wrote about the "Mantle of Martyrdom" in a past edition of??NCTQ's TQ Bulletin.
That's what they're talking about at the Aspen Ideas Festival. Ross Douthat moderates.
While my esteemed colleague may not be buying the numbers coming out of the Big Apple, parents and students are.
Evidently fearless in the face of controversy, Liam writes today on the touchy subject of so-called "Raza Studies" in Arizona on National Review Online.
Even as he announced an initiative yesterday to educate more mathematicians and scientists, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg thought it necessary to point out that anti-immigration policies pose a grave threat to our economy.
"3 of 4 City Students Say They Took No Art Class This Year" Update: NYC Department of Ed press secretary David Cantor writes in the comments section:
New York City's experiences in the last couple weeks reinforce my belief that the notion that we can "hold public schools accountable for results" is questionable.
At Fordham, we normally avoid the paparazzi and gossip columns by donning dark sunglasses and entering buildings only by tunnel or back alley, but still, Checker couldn't avoid the New York Sun's "Out and About" blog, which caught him and others in New York last month celebrating Fordham tr
We've been accused at times of union-bashing (as distinct from the teacher-bashing attributed to Liam, yesterday and today), but perhaps we can cede that mantle to Thomas Sowell.
The National Council of La Raza is headquartered one block from our office. Despite what their spokesmen may or may not tell you, "La Raza" means "The Race," and it's a term that has gained an impressive toehold in some k-12 public schools as "Raza studies." (It's on college campuses, too, of course. One can earn a B.A.
An attack weathered by all education-policy pundits who have not??taught in dreadful, moldy,??urban schools where classes are dismissed to the sound of gunfire is this: "Ah ha! But you haven't spent time in the classroom and therefore have no grounds for opining." How silly, though, if our legislators, staring at their 18.5 percent approval ratings, took to CSPAN and said, "Foolish Americans.
Iowa debates whether to disallow the use of chokeholds in public schools. (Wikipedia provides a handy list of common chokeholds, including the anaconda choke and gogoplata.)
Clearly, it's struck a chord and it's worth unpacking: Why do so many teachers lean so heavily, when criticized, on the "you've never yourself been a teacher" argument? As I noted here, it's logically baseless. Imagine lawyers, doctors, oil-company executives mounting such a defense.
We are pretty good at generating buzz for upcoming reports at Fordham (doesn't hurt that those reports are typically buzzworthy) but this
KIPP schools mostly serve the middle grades and thus spend much of their time plugging the gaps in knowledge and skills that students picked up early on in traditional public schools. But imagine if the youngsters entering KIPP middle schools came from KIPP elementary schools .
The forthcoming debate between Sol Stern and Chris Cerf, over at Eduwonk, should be must-see blogging.
If you're looking for a solid primer on schools in the U.K., you could do worse than this article from the London Review of Books, which breaks down nicely that country's educational evolution. Britain is a famously class-oriented society, and until 1944, its educational system was class-based, too.
At first glance, this New York Times article on Brooklyn's Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice looks to be another feel-good story about the small schools initiative.
The conversion of seven Catholic schools in Washington, D.C., to charter schools is off to a rough start, as the Washington Post reports today that the city's budget failed to provide funding for these schools, and they won't get their first payments in July.
