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The meaning of life
In the Weekly Standard, Liam reviews Anthony Kronman's Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life, which, he reports, picks up where William Buckley left off in God and Man at Yale--lamenting what has gone wrong in higher education,
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The West Berlin of school districts
Students from neighboring districts badly want in to the Copley-Fairlawn City Schools, so they're sneaking in. In response, the district is offering cash rewards for anyone who rats out the illegals. Yeesh.
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Racial remix
It's too bad that Lucky Liam is spending a few days being a bon vivant in Montreal because it would have been fun to see his reaction to this story out of California.
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The religious left?
We appreciate Eduwonk Andy's nice plug of our Catholic schools report, and agree with him that public funding shou
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A lawmaker is not a researcher
An article in yesterday's Washington Post reports on Grover Whitehurst's efforts as founding director of the Institute of Education Sciences to improve the quality and impact of education research.
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Young Democratic mayors for vouchers
The Washington Post editors turn in a nice defense of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program today. As they point out, it will be tough to get Congress to approve the $18 million set aside for the program, especially considering the fierce opposition of D.C.
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School Choice Express?
In the Wall Street Journal, William McGurn picks up where Kathryn Jean Lopez left off , arguing that McCain could win African American votes from Obama (or Clinton) if he would take "this (school choice) campaign i
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NCLB takes no prisoners
I can't comment with much authority on the legal details of the case, but if you're into ed policy surely it's worth knowing that "a federal judge has dismissed the last of four claims in Connecticut's challenge to the federal No Child Left Behind law."
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The perfect crime
The Associated Press reports: A Coffee County High School substitute teacher has been arrested in what police say appears to be a scheme to bilk money from students promised a trip to Disney World.
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Post-post-partisan?
Senator Barack Obama appeared on Fox News Sunday and (among other things) spoke of his school reform bona fides. Chris Wallace asked him to name an issue where he'd be willing to buck the Democratic Party, and Obama pointed to education:
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Obama on charters
In his appearance yesterday on Fox News , Obama said that "I've been very clear about the fact... that we should be experimenting with charter schools." Actually, he hasn't been very clear about that fact, at least during this campaign.
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Tossed
If states and school districts based layoff decisions on merit, and not seniority, we wouldn't have to read about ridiculous situations like this.
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Dollar sense
While most Americans think per-pupil spending in public schools is lower than it really is, many new immigrants think Catholic school tuition is higher than it really is.
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Fordham Fellows change the world
Congrats to Davida Gatlin, a member of our first class of Fordham Fellows, whose
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The arts in K-12
Sunday's New York Times Magazine features an article on K-12 arts education. The piece sets out to refute Obama's evidently misleading claims that teaching the arts leads to improved student performance on standardized tests.
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And still more on ANAR
Checker writes about the twenty-fifth anniversary of A Nation at Risk in the Wall Street Journal and the Gadfly.
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Don't know much about education spending
The upcoming issue of Education Next (which Fordham sponsors) reveals that "Almost 96 percent of the public underestimate either per-pupil spending in their districts or teacher salaries in their states." In fact, they vastly underestimate these figures:
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Checker vs. Reverend Wright
Evidently Reverend Jeremiah Wright made some controversial statements about education and race last night. Over at The Corner, Byron York asks Checker for his take on the whole thing.
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A cause without rebels
At The Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez writes that we can help save our inner cities by saving faith-based schools.
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Teach us
Ed school professor Brad Olsen writes in the San Francisco Chronicle that "we don't much hear from, or about, teachers' experiences in--and perspectives on--what's happening in schools these days." Really???Just yesterday we published in The Gadfly
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If the think-tank thing doesn't work out...
Eduwonkette flatters us. Unfortunately, Mike can't carry a tune, and he's just too damn honest to lip-sync.
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My teacher is stupider than yours
Coby's latest spark--that students (or their parents) who rated their teachers online could provide useful feedback--is intriguing. He's right that such k-12 rating websites exist (see here) but haven't reached a critical mass of users.
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Hyper-unionized higher ed?
Several people questioned my argument the other day that bad ideas tend to flow from higher education to our K-12 education system (e.g., here and here).
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