Cross-posted at Education Week. That's, more or less, the title of the article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal's Saturday Review section last weekend. It was written by Alan Greenspan, the former head of the Federal Reserve and Adrian Woodridge, the political editor...
Cross-posted at Education Week. I was at a meeting recently at which one of the participants, the head of one of the world's most admired national education systems, in explaining both the success and the fragility of his system, said, "The whole things rests on trust." The...
Cross-posted at Education Week. Last week, I wrote a blog commenting on the draft policy on performance standards recently issued by the National Assessment Governing Board. In it, I called for performance standards based not on people's opinions about what constitutes basic, proficient and advanced performance...
Cross-posted at Education Week. Forgive me if I am a little cynical about the eternal dance between measurement and accountability when it comes to reporting on the progress and achievement of American school children. From the beginning, the leaders of our state education systems have invited...
Cross-posted at Education Week. First, a shout-out to Hank Levin, who wrote me to point out that, in attributing a Nobel Prize in Economics to Nikolai Kondratieff in a recent blog, I awarded him a prize that did not yet exist when he died. That was...
Cross-posted at Education Week. The United States, long widely regarded as the world leader in education, peaked and leveled off in the 1970s, while a growing number of other countries came from behind to far exceed American performance. Why? If we knew the answer to that...
Cross-posted at Education Week. A growing number of states are working toward setting standards for college and career readiness. In many of those states, the argument is being made that because all students should leave high school ready for college or career, the high school diploma...
Cross-posted at Education Week. How can you not like this man and admire him? He comes across on every page as smart, honest, decent, articulate, knowledgeable, humble and deeply caring. Who could wish for a better advocate for the children many of our schools are failing...
Cross-posted at Education Week. In the British pubs, as the evening comes to a close, the bartenders intone the words, "It's time, it's time." NCEE is not a pub, but it is time. I will be 79 come November. Some two or three years ago, I began...
Cross-posted at Education Week. It is a sweet time. The clematis is gone, only its thin brown stem left to tell the tale. The day lilies, too, have opened and closed their last blooms. The great show put on by the azaleas and rhododendrons and mountain...