Cross-posted at Education Week. Mike Petrilli, one of the most thoughtful members of this country's education commentariat, wrote a note to me the other day about a blog I'd recently written. The blog was about the need for more research to determine why some education systems...
Cross-posted at Education Week. In case you had not noticed, allow me to inform you of the precipitous decline of the American school publishing industry. When I was in school, there was a great kaleidoscope of textbook publishers from Scholastic to Addison-Wesley, Silver Burdett to McGraw Hill,...
Cross-posted at Education Week. You have just been made commissioner of education in your home state. Your maiden speech is coming up. It’s your chance to lay out your agenda and get statewide support for it. But what is that agenda? You know your state can provide...
Cross-posted at Education Week. Anya Kamenetz recently did a story for NPR in which she reported that the authors of A Nation at Risk, the famous 1983 U.S. government report on the nation's schools, "...
Cross-posted at Education Week. In my last blog, I made the case that the recent headline-grabbing strikes of school teachers are a response to an increasingly beleaguered occupation, which, under increasing attack in recent years, is proving to be increasingly unattractive to capable high school students,...
Cross-posted at Education Week. Little wonder the teachers are striking. The only question is why it took them so long. There are the stories about teachers unable to keep their families above the poverty line without working two or three jobs. And stories about the states...
Cross-posted at Education Week. The April 1st Washington Post carried an op-ed by Arne Duncan, President Obama's Secretary of Education titled, "People are saying education reform hasn't worked. Don't believe them." On April 10, Education Week announced the most recent results from the National Assessment of...
Cross-posted at Education Week. Some of you may have noticed that I stopped blogging two months ago. I fell off a bike on a small island in the Bahamas, did a lot of damage to my spine and spent the next five weeks in two hospitals. ...
Cross-posted at Education Week. I recently came across a rather acid attack on the methods used by people like me who argue that the U.S. education system is less efficient than the systems of other countries. Published by the Albert Shanker Institute, the piece in question...
Cross-posted at Education Week. The champions are in the ring. The crowd goes wild. Bernie Sanders, the likely 2020 Democratic candidate, says the problem with the economy is the fat cats who have rigged it for their benefit. He wants to unleash a progressive tax schedule on...