What Tabloids Know about Education
This story proves that it is dangerous to get your information about American education from New York City’s tabloids. Campbell Brown, journalist extraordinaire. has now apparently become an education expert, based on her close reading of New York City’s tabloids. To be precise, the story says she read “the headlines.”
If you are a regular reader of Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, you would be convinced that all charters are miracle schools and all public schools are disaster zones that destroy the lives of innocent children. Furthermore, you would feel certain that the public schools were overrun with teachers who were sexual predators and that these monsters don’t deserve a hearing. They need to be fired the moment they are accused!
I well remember a story that filled the local media when I was living in Washington, D.C., in the early 1990s. Six
What We Can Learn from Japan
If you are a regular reader of Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, you would be convinced that all charters are miracle schools and all public schools are disaster zones that destroy the lives of innocent children. Furthermore, you would feel certain that the public schools were overrun with teachers who were sexual predators and that these monsters don’t deserve a hearing. They need to be fired the moment they are accused!
I well remember a story that filled the local media when I was living in Washington, D.C., in the early 1990s. Six
What We Can Learn from Japan
The New York Times had a front-page story about a generational divide in Japan.
The article begins, “As Japan has ceded dominance in industry after industry that once lifted this nation to economic greatness, there has been plenty of blame to go around. A nuclear disaster that raised energy costs. A lack of entrepreneurship. China’s relatively cheap work force.”
The article says that the government’s decision to have a strong yen favors the elderly and protects their pensions, but makes Japanese products prohibitively expensive, which is “hollowing out the country’s industrial base” and “exacerbating the nation’s two-decade-long economic stagnation.”
As I read the article, I thought about how American policymakers look enviously at Japan’s high test scores on
The Odd Couple
The article begins, “As Japan has ceded dominance in industry after industry that once lifted this nation to economic greatness, there has been plenty of blame to go around. A nuclear disaster that raised energy costs. A lack of entrepreneurship. China’s relatively cheap work force.”
The article says that the government’s decision to have a strong yen favors the elderly and protects their pensions, but makes Japanese products prohibitively expensive, which is “hollowing out the country’s industrial base” and “exacerbating the nation’s two-decade-long economic stagnation.”
As I read the article, I thought about how American policymakers look enviously at Japan’s high test scores on
The Odd Couple
Blogger Jonathan Pelto in Connecticut read about the “school reform plan” proposed by conservative Republican Governor Chris Christie and realized that it was virtually identical to the one proposed earlier this year by Connecticut Governor Malloy.
Under this plan, the Legislature was asked to authorize a Commissioner’s Network, “a system in which Stefan Pryor, Malloy’s Commissioner of Education, would be given the authority to take over a series of local schools, remove the existing staff, ban collective bargaining and turn the schools over to some third-party who would then be exempt from the state’s laws requiring competitive bidding and limiting the use of consultants.”
Odd couple indeed. The allegedly liberal governor in Connecticut and the ultra-conservative governor in New
Under this plan, the Legislature was asked to authorize a Commissioner’s Network, “a system in which Stefan Pryor, Malloy’s Commissioner of Education, would be given the authority to take over a series of local schools, remove the existing staff, ban collective bargaining and turn the schools over to some third-party who would then be exempt from the state’s laws requiring competitive bidding and limiting the use of consultants.”
Odd couple indeed. The allegedly liberal governor in Connecticut and the ultra-conservative governor in New