Cross-posted on Education Week I turned on NPR the other day and heard the interviewer ask Senator Harkin why his committee, in its new report, had gone after the for-profit vocational schools so aggressively. The Republicans, the interviewer explained, were pointing out that the public community...
Cross-posted on Education Week This week, the University of California, Berkeley was the latest to announce that they are joining forces with Harvard and MIT to offer free online learning through edX, a provider of massive open online courses (MOOC). A competing provider, Coursera, was created...
Cross-posted on Education Week The good news from the campaign trail is that both President Obama and Mitt Romney want to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. The bad news is that the low-skill, high-pay jobs we lost are not coming back and our...
Cross-posted on Education Week My older son went to the University of California at San Diego (UCSD). Toward the end of the first year, he called me up. He was obviously nervous. He told me that wanted to major in electrical engineering. If he changed colleges...
Cross-posted on Education Week I got some bad news this week. It has to do with one of my grandchildren, who attends public schools in Maryland in a pretty upscale county. I'll call her Judy. She is 11, a very strong student. When Judy was in...
Cross-posted on Education Week Of course you know what STEM stands for: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. It's an acronym, signifying a program and a national priority. The argument for its centrality is simple. Our economy is technology-driven. The strength of that economy depends on our...
Cross-posted on Education Week Shall I let you in on a little secret? Not long after the Obama administration took office, my colleague Betsy Brown Ruzzi and I paid a visit to an old friend, Carmel Martin, who had left behind many years as a senior...
Cross-posted on Education Week Last week's education blog by Jay Mathews in the Washington Post takes note of the release of Mitt Romney's education platform, compares it to that of the President and pronounces them "twins." The two parties, he says, largely agree on education policy...
Cross-posted on Education Week Pasi Sahlberg, in his landmark book Finnish Lessons, makes the point that Finland's development of extensive student achievement standards proved to be a very important landmark on the trajectory of Finland's rise to world class status in the education arena. Later on,...
Cross-posted on Education Week Much of the history of American education over the last half century or more can be seen as a struggle between those who favor quality and those who favor equity as the top priority for national education reform. The stage was set...