Putting the "F" Word Back in Education Smokey Daniels, a well-known literacy guru, was talking about schools at a meeting my staff and I were attending. He stood up and said, “I think we need to put the “F” word back in schools. I mean we need “F” (pause for effect), “U” (another ...
Beyond Silver Bullets for American Education By Pedro Noguera and Randi Weingarten, December 22, 2010 previously published in *The Nation* Some of today's leading school "reformers" claim that the primary cause of the ills affecting American education is a glut of bad teachers, and that the ...
Meet the New Test -- Same as the Old Test In a recent Washington Post piece, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan repeated a refrain we have heard far too often about the subject of testing. In a nutshell, Duncan admits that No Child Left Behind and its reliance on standardized, ...
Will the Revolving Door for Urban Superintendents Ever Slow Down? It is the morning after the Nov. 2 election, and Mark Roosevelt is tired. The Pittsburgh schools chief has a cold and is in the third or fourth week of a diet and he’s been up until nearly dawn watching the election results on television. The news is ...
Tough Times Ahead for Public Education TULSA, OK – So you don't think the last election was a setback for teacher unions and education progressives? Think again. So says Kimberly Anderson, Director of Governmental Relations for the National Education Association. Earlier this month, she ...
Forum Conveners: We Need to Define Successful Schools TULSA, OK – Those who want to create better schools need to resist the urge to protect the status quo and instead provide a clear vision of what a good education system should look like. That was the message from Conveners from The Forum for ...
Teachers Urged to Take Back Their Profession TULSA, OK – Get parents on board. Withhold political contributions to politicians who would bash teachers. Expose myths. Resist bad practices. The hundreds of teachers who gathered here for the National Council of Urban Education Association's fall ...
Noguera Calls on CES Delegates to be "Critical Friends" SAN FRANCISCO -- Pedro Noguera has had plenty of access to Obama administration policy makers. In fact, he sat down with 50 people from the U.S. Department of Education, who listened to his thoughts for 90 minutes. "Then I left and nothing changed," ...
Putting Money Aside, and Asking Questions That Matter SAN FRANCISCO – Why do we require every youngster to spend 12 years in school? And why do we insist that unless students attend college, they have no future? Those kinds of question rarely get asked in public-policy debates about education. But ...