The Answer Sheet:
UC system president Napolitano ‘deeply skeptical’ about Education’s college rating system
Education ‘Day of Action’ set Monday in 60-plus cities
The future of high school math education
Video: Maya Angelou’s moving tribute poem to Mandela
Here is a poem that Maya Angelou wrote and delivered as a tribute to the great Nelson Mandela, who died Thursday at the age of 95. Watch it. It is worth the four minutes and 40 seconds it will take to listen.
Four reasons it would be shocking if Kaya Henderson becomes NYC schools chief
Articles about the possibility that Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio will pick D.C. Schools Superintendent Kaya Henderson as New York City’s new schools chancellor are popping up in the New York press, apparently fueled by a recent phone conversation that de Blasio initiated with Henderson. Nobody’s reported definitely what the discussion was about, but that hasn’t […]
Why the ‘good school’ vs ‘bad school’ debate is all wrong
Here’s an interesting look at what we mean when we talk about school and schooling, and how school reform has affected the meaning of both. This was written by Anne Pomerantz, senior lecturer in educational linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education. By Anne Pomerantz Philadelphia’s NatIhanial Hawthorne Elementary is now a condominium […]
The dangers of PISA envy
This was PISA week, for anybody who slept through it and managed to miss the avalanche of coverage about the newly released results of the 2012 Program for International Student Achievement, which showed U.S. students scored average in reading, math and science. Naturally there were many calls to look for best practices from the countries […]
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Janet Napolitano, who was President Obama’s Homeland Security secretary before being named president of the University of California system this past summer, said Friday that she was “deeply skeptical” of a plan by the administration to rate colleges according to specific criteria because it is too hard to develop meaningful data points. Napolitano, who was […]
A coalition of education, labor, civic and civil rights organizations, led by the American Federation of Teachers, is staging a “National Day of Action” on Monday with dozens of coordinated events in cities across the country that are aimed at building a national movement to fight corporate-influenced school reform and offer alternative ways to improve public […]
A few weeks ago a group of senior mathematicians, teachers, statisticians, and curriculum developers met in Boston to discuss the future of high school mathematics, revisiting issues addressed by a 2008 conference organized by the Center for Mathematics Education at the University of Maryland. This time, the Common Core State Standards was front and center […]
DEC 05
A quick message for school reformers
From Montgomery County Schools Superintendent Joshua Starr — a tweet that education policymakers who like to tell educators what to do should consider: Labor Secretary Tom Perez: “what do you think” is one of most important sentences for any workplace. — Joshua Starr (@mcpssuper) December 5, 2013
Why educating the educators is complex
One of the biggest debates in public education today is over how to best educate student teacher for the rigors of the classroom. Here is a thoughtful piece on the essence of teaching and the kind of teacher education programs we really need from Mike Rose, who is on the faculty of the UCLA Graduate […]
DEC 04
School district to pay students up to $300 for ACT scores
The school board in Huntsville, Alabama, has unanimously decided to pay students for achieving benchmark scores on the ACT college admissions test in an effort, members said, to get kids to take the test more seriously. WHNT News voted Tuesday night for the cash incentives, which will work this way: Benchmarks scores will be set, […]
New SAT delayed to 2016
(Correction: The College Board corrected the message sent to members clarifying that the date for the new PSAT/NMSQT® is fall 2015. The original message had two different dates.) The new version of the SAT college admissions exam that was due to be unveiled in 2015 is now being delayed until spring 2016. David Coleman, the […]
Harvard College’s median grade is an A-, dean admits
Grade inflation lives at Harvard University. The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, has reported that the median grade at Harvard College is now an A- and students most frequently get A’s. The news was delivered by Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris on Tuesday. The paper reported in this story by Matthew Q. Clarida and […]
DEC 03
Four lessons on new PISA scores — Ravitch
Here, from education historian and activist Diane Ravitch, the leading figure in the movement against corporate-influenced school reform, is a post with her views about the newly released scores from the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment, which showed that U.S. 15-year-old students have retained their no-better-than-average rankings in math, reading and science. Her latest […]
A PISA contradiction
Should Americans use the newly released Program of International Student Assessment scores, which show U.S. students have retained their very average rankings, as a tool to improve education policies? It all depends on whom you ask. Here’s what the new report titled “Lessons from PISA 2012 for the United States,” from the Organization for Economic Cooperation […]
The only international test score info you need to know
It’s PISA Day, meaning that the latest results from the Program for International Student Assessment have just been released, and — brace yourself – the average scores for U.S. students were not very much different from any of the previous comparison years. They were generally in the middle of the pack of 65 countries and individual […]
Key PISA test results for U.S. students
Here are highlights of the newly released 2012 scores from the Program of International Student Assessment, an exam given every three years to 15 year olds around the world in reading, math and science. In this administration of PISA, 65 countries and education systems participated. Connecticut, Florida, and Massachusetts each participated for the first time […]
Are Finland’s vaunted schools slipping?
Finland has for years been a leader in education, scoring at or near the top of international assessments and capturing the attention of the world for its successful approach to education. But Finland is no longer at the top of international test rankings (though they haven’t fallen very far), as newly released results from the […]
DEC 02
Catholics split over Common Core standards
Catholic educators, scholars and bishops are engaging in an increasingly vocal debate about the Common Core State Standards, with a major split developing between those who support the Core and those who don’t. More than 100 dioceses have already approved the standards for their Catholic schools, but others are rejecting them, including the Diocese of […]
Why is a country the size of New Mexico beating the U.S. in academic performance?
Tuesday is “PISA Day,” that is, the day that the 2012 results of reading, math and science tests will be released from the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, which tests 15 year olds every three years in more than 65 countries and education systems. The United States can be expected to do pretty […]
Obama administration backtracks (again) on teacher equity
President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have talked the talked about the importance of teachers, but when it comes to providing kids with equitable access to great teachers, they haven’t exactly walked the walk. Here is a post on the issue by Tara Kini, senior staff attorney at Public Advocates, a nonprofit law firm […]
DEC 01
How public opinion about new PISA test scores is being manipulated
This Tuesday, new reading, math and science results will be released from the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, given every three years to 15-year-old students in more than 65 countries and education systems by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The results are always big news — and the usual average U.S. scores […]
Rosa Parks’s official arrest report: She refused to give bus seat to white man 58 years ago today
Here’s a piece of history: the arrest report from Montgomery, Ala., police for Rosa Parks on Dec. 1, 1955, the day she rode a Montgomery city bus and refused to get up and move to the back of the bus so a white man could take her seat, as she was expected to in that […]
Amazing product placement: ‘American Girl’ backpack comes with mini Pearson math book
You’ve got to give it to Pearson: They do great product placement. Who would expect an “American Girl” miniature backpack set for a doll to include a tiny math book with a cover that comes from a Common Core-aligned textbook line put out by the education publishing giant? Yes, educator and blogger Chris Cerrone found that […]
NOV 30
The 21 books Obama bought on D.C. shopping trip
President Obama went book shopping on Saturday with daughters Malia and Sasha, taking recommendations from the staff of Politics and Prose in Northwest Washington and walking out with 21 books (see list below) that were presumably for gifts, as they were aimed at a wide age-range of readers. The president strolled in with virtually no […]
Teacher slams scripted Common Core lessons that must be taught ‘word for word’
A public school teacher in Delaware wrote the following moving piece but asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation. It explains what is happening to many teachers who are being given scripted lessons aligned to the Common Core State Standards by their principals and district superintendents. Note that this teacher is not opposed […]
How thinking like an engineer can help school reform
Arthur H. Camins, director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., suggests a new way to make progress in education policy — through engineering design thinking. The ideas expressed in this article are his alone and do not represent Stevens Institute. His other writing […]