Latest News and Comment from Education

Monday, April 7, 2014

4-7-14 The Answer Sheet

The Answer Sheet:






Chicago charters do no better than traditional public schools, new study finds
An examination of every score that Chicago students earned on state-mandated standardized tests last year reveals that charter schools — which Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) has been promoting — don’t perform any better than traditional public schools. The analysis, conducted by the Chicago Sun-Times and the Medill Data Project at Northwestern University, reviewed the 2013 […]


Student to profs: Don’t force us to take tests online
Kendall Breitman is a 22-year-old senior at American University in Washington, D.C. She is 22 years old and originally from Havertown, Pa., right outside of West Philadelphia. She went to school at Haverford High School (not one of the newer high schools that give their students computers to work with) and then went on to […]


The one thing I sort of like about 2014 Most Challenging High Schools list
Every year my fantastic Post colleague Jay Mathews takes a great deal of time to assemble his list of America’s Most Challenging High Schools, and he’s just done it again for his 2014 list, which you can read all about here.  And just about every year, I write something about why I find the list […]


Common Core test gives students no time to think — teacher
Travis Durfee is a teacher at Watkins Glen Middle School in Watkins Glen, New York who is administering Common Core-aligned standardized tests to students that were designed by Pearson, the education company. In the following piece, which he calls “Driving Lessons,” he looks from within the schoolhouse gates at the disconnect between the mandated exams and […]    




4-6-14 The Answer Sheet
The Answer Sheet: Michelle Rhee still doesn’t get itMichelle Rhee still doesn’t get it. The former D.C. schools chancellor and now leader of a national organization that pushes corporate school and attacks teachers unions,  just wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post that uses bad analogies and a number of straw men to argue against the growing “opt out” movement in which parents are refusing […]