Cross-posted at Education Week. Like so many others, I am watching the presidential election campaign unfold with a gathering sense of dread. And, I must say, a certain sense of shame. Thomas Jefferson famously told us that "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free...
Cross-posted at Education Week. We start from the assumption that policy should aim at getting a first-rate teacher in front of every student. Then we note that the research on expertise says that it takes about 10 years to become an expert in just about any...
In recent administrations, both when Democrats and Republicans were in the White House, the senior figures in both parties and their economic advisors agreed that free trade was in the country's best interest. Of course, everyone understood that this was true overall, not necessarily for...
Cross-posted at Education Week Watching the presidential candidates of both parties debating and campaigning against each other, I find my attention wandering. Neither the questions I hear them being asked nor the answers I hear them giving address what I take to be the central problems...
Cross-posted at Education Week On the one hand we have California's drought. On the other hand we have the stunning collapse of the quality of the nation's workforce. Both represent clear and present dangers of the most dramatic kind. California, without skipping a beat, makes one...
Cross-posted at Education Week In my last blog post, I discussed the deference and reverence once afforded educators by elected leaders regarding how to best run the American public education system and how all of that has come to an end. The result of this has...
Cross-posted at Education Week Our school superintendents last in their jobs now only three to four years, on average. The rate of turnover among our chief state school officers is unprecedented. It seems that fewer and fewer people are interested in applying for these jobs. They...
Cross-posted at Education Week In several blogs that preceded this one, I have made the case that mandated annual testing of all students in the United States, when coupled with an accountability regime in which the data produced by those tests is used to make important...
Cross-posted at Education Week So we now have the civil rights community accusing those who oppose annual accountability testing of deliberately undermining the civil rights of minority children. The No Child Left Behind Act required not only that students be tested each year in grades...
Cross-posted at Education Week The nations with the best-performing education systems have two things in common that have nothing to do with the specific education policies and practices they have embraced. The first has to do with the goals they have chosen to embrace. The second...