Computers in the classroom: the disconnect between K-12 and higher education

The dark side of censorhip: bad books

As a journalist for the better part of 30 years (not counting the samizdat paper I wrote and published (on my dad's mimeograph machine) in my high school seminary), I worship our first amendment.?

Wrap-up: Major findings from Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude?

Last week, Fordham released a groundbreaking new study on high-achieving students, titled Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude? Performance Trends of Top Students.

Learn early, learn often: School counts

You can read Sam Wang and Sandra Aaamodt's ?Delay Kindergarten at Your Child's Peril? essay in today's New York Times for what the two neuroscientists have to say about the development of young brains ?

Academic growth of high achievers

Fordham's new report released on Tuesday, Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude?

The unilateral repeal of NCLB and the 2012 election

The Obama administration's new waiver plan (officially here, and covered extensively here,

Fallen high flyers don't fall far

Yesterday, we looked at the first finding of Fordham's new groundbreaking study, Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude?

A majority of high-flying students remain that way

Yesterday, Fordham released a groundbreaking study examining the achievement of individual high-performing students?or ?high flyers??over time.

Do high flyers maintain their altitude?

If America is to remain internationally competitive, we need to maximize the potential of our top students. Over the last decade, however, federal and state education-accountability systems?particularly in the wake of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001?have placed primary emphasis on moving low-performing students toward proficiency.

Distressing but not surprising

We asked a few experts to weigh in on our new study, "Do High Flyers Maintain Their Performance: Performance Trends of Top Students," as part of an online forum we'll be hosting on Flypaper over the next couple days.

Teachers Breaking Out of the Box

I gave up bashing teachers years ago, when I realized that, as with soldiers in the trenches, they had their hands full just staying alive.

Teaching about 9/11 in 2011

This week, teachers across the land are greeting students, assigning seats, issuing textbooks, struggling to remember everyone's name?and doing their best to teach one of the most challenging lessons of the year: the events of September 11, 2001, why they happened, why they matter, and why we are commemorating them.

1+1=Justice: The return of equity math

Yes, believe it or not, the ideological wars can be brought to the teaching of mathematics.? So argues a professor of education at the University of Delaware School of Education, Tonya Bartell, in an article she's written for the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics:?

Individual learning styles: Not so fast, bub!

Of the many theories that have overtaken educational policy and practice, few have been as influential as the belief that every child learns in his or her own way (see Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind:The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, 1983, which set the ?one size fits all? world on fire).?

One size fits most

If you step back from day to day vitriol that characterizes the current education-policy ?debate,? and glimpse the larger picture, two worldviews on education reform emerge. One, articulated by the likes of Linda Darling-Hammond, Marc Tucker, David Cohen, and others, obsesses about curricular ?coherence,? and the lack thereof in our nation's schools.

Is Wyoming bowing out of the Common Core?

Last June, the Wyoming Board of Education adopted the Common Core, making the Equality State one of the first states to do so. And implementation of the core standards has begun in earnest, with teachers around the state beginning to align their curriculum and instruction to the new standards.

Andrew Porter has a point (its just not clear what it is)

Adding fuel to a small but growing anti-Common Core fire, Andrew Porter penned an op-ed in Education Week this week that questioned the value and rigor of the Common Core ELA and math standards. He explains:

More claptrap about sex education

Excuse the pun, but here we go again.? News out of New York is that Gotham's public schools will ?mandate sex education? (how not to have sex, why not to have it, or to have it safely, whatever).?

We can't predict the future; we can teach the essential

Every so often educators and reformers think, if we're educating kids for the future, we need to do a better job of adapting our education system to meet the needs of tomorrow. That our education systems needs to, in some sense, ?get with the times? so that we can better serve our students today.

Summer Learning Loss -- Is It Any Worse in the Winter?

Jeff Smink's New York Times essay, ?This is Your Brain on Summer,? about summer learning loss, makes me think of my childhood summers in Oregon's fertile Willamette Valley, where I am now vacationing.

Reading is NOT fundamental: Knowledge is

It is encouraging news, from Sol Stern of the Manhattan Institute, that New York City's three-year-old pilot project testing the content rich Core Knowledge Language Arts curriculum in ten low-income schools has proved so far, as the D

Let's talk about education reform

The Republican presidential field is beginning to take shape, and candidates and maybe-candidates are figuring out where they stand and what to say. Sooner or later, they will need to say something about education. May we suggest a few talking points? Or, better yet, a potential speech for a GOP candidate? ***

Tech school, private school, and those damn reformers

Today's Times (unless you read it online yesterday or the day before), covers some fertile educational ground in three important arenas.

Salamat at Paalam*

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Atlanta, still burning: The cheating scandal continues

This is getting to be an old story (see here and here), but it's an important one.

History lesson: Where's the Declaration?

It is hard to read the Declaration of Independence without being moved by the document's plainspoken audacity, especially recalling that it wasn't then a "document," but a rather blunt call to arms.?

College for all! Please!

I stewed most of the week about how to respond to Deborah Meier's recent Bridging Differences post on ?college for all.??

Recommended reading: A great essay & a history test

There are two stories in today's New York Times that merit some consideration.

The importance of history

The following, by Peter Wehner, originally appeared on the Commentary Magazine blog.