While Eduwonk Andy and Leo Casey of the United Federation of Teachers spar about teacher collective bargaining agreements and whether or not they "prevent educational innovation," some
The Seattle Times is into the third day of its series on the "resegregation" of the Seattle Public Schools.
Still trying to get your head around the recent Reading First evaluation? Do you work on Capitol Hill and want to give your member of Congress a quick overview of the hub-bub?
If high-quality teachers don't want to work in schools where students of one race predominate (a claim that seems dubious, for the reasons Mike points out), this fact??remains: students at lots of schools are going to be of the same race. Alas, housing patterns make it so.
Mike just quoted this from the Rocky Mountain News: Nearly two dozen teachers from Denver's Montclair Elementary took a field trip of their own Friday--to their union headquarters to urge a vote on the school's six-week-old request for autonomy.
My short post today on the decision of a couple-dozen Denver high school teachers to skip school last Friday did not sit well with one commenter and at least one educator. The commenter wrote:
Amid all the news of doom and gloom, here's one reason for optimism: America's best spellers appear to be getting better and better.
Baffled by America's arcane process for electing a president, the Edmonton Sun's Edward Greenspan has this to say:
The latest issue of Commentary contains a review of Checker's newest book, Troublemaker. It's available here for subscribers.
With the release of every new education report, it seems, we hear from commentators that the findings are promising but certainly do not constitute a "silver bullet" or a "panacea" for k-12's problems. No longer.
Republicans should be thankful that, according to Rasmussen,* education ranks only sixth out of ten issues for American voters right now, because Congressional Democrats are opening up a big
My recent post on special education (SPED) had one education scholar emailing me to
Brian Greene, a Columbia professor who wrote two top-selling popularizations of
It seems that students at top colleges can't soon shed the feelings of anxiety that accompanied their hypercompetitive high-school careers.
Or at least compassionate conservatism, of which NCLB is a cornerstone. So implieth Michael Gerson in this morning's Washington Post.
John Hood, president of the John Locke Foundation, writes in National Review a solid, sweeping article about higher education. It's currently available only to subscribers (they, and hackers, may read it here). Some good parts:
The problem here elicited is a problem--at??least because it engenders a lot of boring writing--and I'm convinced that it's getting worse. (No, I don't have data to support that.) Today's k-12 system generally ignores writing and today's colleges demand lousy writing, so there you go.
Worth keeping an eye on this, especially because "the Senate plan would require schools to administer state tests to voucher students."
It's entirely appropriate that the Louisiana Senate would require schools participating in a possible New Orleans voucher program to "administer state tests to voucher students." That's hardly out of line for other voucher programs.
Mike and I can disagree all day, during normal business hours, about the level of transparency we should demand from voucher schools. But in the NOLA case, the issue is "contentious" and might stall the $10 million proposal (although the city's Catholic schools will accept standardized testing--they're desperate).
The pressure high school students face to get into top colleges has intensified to the point that it's susceptible to some hilarious satirizing.
Mike and Liam discuss Mike's controversial Gadfly article on the burdensome health care costs associated with teacher obesity. httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=fOux-s2t0Xo
One of Senator John McCain's most attractive virtues is his willingness to stand on principle even in the face of adversity. He promoted comprehensive immigration reform even though his own party's base hated it. He continues to support the Iraq War even though the public wants the troops out.
