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Mom: My kindergartner was ‘work-sheeted to death’
This year I have posted a number of pieces (here, here, here and here, for example) about the travesty that is now kindergarten in many public schools. Today, under this school reform in which standardized-test scores are the chief metric for “accountability” of students, schools, teachers, etc., kindergarten has in many classrooms become an academic […]
Mom’s letter to college-bound daughter: Why ‘I have reason to fear’
Vicki Abeles is a filmmaker, attorney and mother of three. She is also the co-director and producer of the education documentary “Race to Nowhere,” which revealed the damage to young people being done by the pressures of school, homework, tutoring and extracurricular activities. In the following letter Abeles tells her daughter Jamey, who will be […]
JUL 17
A basic flaw in the argument against affirmative action
A panel of judges from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals just issued a ruling saying that the University of Texas can continue to use race as one factor in undergraduate admissions decisions in an effort to create a diverse student body. The judges were ruling in the high-profile case of a white Texas […]
JUL 16
Did Obama and Duncan really hear what four teachers told them?
Here is the third in a series of pieces I have been publishing about a lunch meeting that President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan had recently with four teachers from high-poverty schools that focused on education, the teaching profession and school reform. The first was a post by teacher Justin Minkel — the 2007 […]
Why building relationships is vital in school reform
Is it possible that some school reforms that hold promise are failing because educators are simply not given the time or resources to communicate and build meaningful relationships with each other in order to properly implement them? Or because the conditions in which they do their work do not support productive interactions? The authors of […]
JUL 13
AFT calls for Education Secretary Duncan to submit to ‘improvement’ plan or resign
Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s relations with the country’s largest teachers unions — which collectively have more than 4 million members — keep getting worse. Earlier this month, the nation’s largest teachers union called for him to resign. On Sunday, the second-largest teachers union passed a resolution that stopped short of a direct call for him […]
Readers react to what teachers told Obama
There was a lot of reaction to a post I published a few days ago about what happened when four teachers from high-poverty schools sat down with President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan for lunch at the White House to talk about education, teaching and school reform. Here are some of the reactions from […]
JUL 12
How Microsoft will make money from Common Core (despite what Bill Gates said)
Microsoft founder Bill Gates got somewhat indignant when my Post colleague Lyndsey Layton asked him in an interview this past spring about concerns of some opponents of the Common Core State Standards that his important support for the initiative has been driven by business interests. The interview was part of the extensive reporting Layton did […]
