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Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Scary: GOP’s 2012 education priorities - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Scary: GOP’s 2012 education priorities - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Scary: GOP’s 2012 education priorities

This would be comical if it weren’t so serious.

At a time when public school district budgets are being slashed and there is a highly contentious national debate about how to reform failing schools, this is one of the three “major proposals” of the education proposals in the 2012 budget proposal released today by the Republican-led House Committee on the Budget: reviving a voucher program in Washington D.C. public schools.

Yes, you read that right.

The budget proposal, spearheaded by the committee chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and called “The Path to Prosperity: Restoring

Awakening in crisis: A lesson from Japan

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This post was written by Mark Phillips, professor emeritus of secondary education at San Francisco State University and author of a monthly column on education for the Marin Independent Journal.

By Mark Phillips

Most of you will recall that for a number of years U.S. education was compared unfavorably to that of the Japanese. The criterion was high achievement test scores, especially in science and math, and the conclusions were apparently clear. More rigor was needed, stricter academic discipline, more time on task, and more family emphasis