Andrea Gabor is a friend and a wise writer about education. She sent the following appeal: Dear Friends, First and foremost, I hope this note finds you safe and healthy. As many of you know, I was supposed to lead another student, political-reporting trip this spring, this time to the Texas border; Covid19 foiled our travel plans and, instead, my students produced a fabulous pack of articles on l
Peter Greene knows, as do we, that the tech industry has stolen and misused the term “personalized learning,” which to them means a student in front of a computer that holds his or her data. In this post, he reimagines a future of genuine personalized learning, in which there are small classes and one to one instruction. But what if we reclaimed the term “personalized education”? What if we decid
I recently read Pawan Dhingra’s new book Hyper Education, which explores the competitiveness that some parents feel about their children’s schooling and their fear that their children might be “falling behind.” This pressure, as many here have noted, makes children feel stressed out and deprives them of imaginative and creative activities. I invited Professor Dhingra to write a précis of his book
FairTest has been battling the abuse, misuse, and overuse of standardized testing since the early 1970s. It took a global pandemic to demonstrate that students applying to college need not take a standardized test for admission. How will colleges decide whom to admit? They will figure it out. Just watch. Many colleges and universities went test-optional years ago and managed to choose their first
Thanks to a complete absence of national leadership in the United States, the coronavirus is spreading. Other countries have shut it down. Not us! We are free to get diseased! Dana Milbank writes here about what happens when a nation has leadership and what happens when it does not. How nice it would be to be in Tokyo today. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government moved to its last stage of reopening o
Politico reports that the Federal Drug Administration has withdrawn authorization for emergency use of a drugs repeatedly endorsed by Trump. Based on various trials, the FDA concluded that the drug is not effective at preventing the coronavirus nor is it effective as a treatment for the virus. Trump recently claimed that he was taking the drug himself. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she worried
In a stunning surprise, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that LGBT workers are protected by the Civil Rights Act. In the biggest surprise, the decision was 6-3 and was written by Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch. What a nice surprise for Pride Month! Adam Liptak of the New York Times wrote: The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a landmark civil rights law protects gay and transgender workers from workplace
Erica L. Green of the New York Times wrote a detailed expose of charter schools , some with the backing of billionaire donors like Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, that have sought and received federal coronavirus aid intended for small businesses. Thus, they collect funding as “public schools,” yet collect federal aid as small businesses. Peer-reviewed studies have shown that charter schools, a
Bad news for the College Board, which owns the SAT. Yale University is going test-optional for the class entering in fall 2021. Today Yale became the fifth Ivy League school to adopt a test-optional policy for the class of undergraduates who will be applying for admission in the fall of 2021. It joins Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania who have also announced they wou
John Thompson is a retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma. He writes here about the resumption of Trump’s big political rallies, beginning in Tulsa. The attendees will have to sign a waiver releasing the campaign of any liability if they fall sick with COVID. Will Trump promote the disease amongst his enthusiastic base? He won’t wear a mask. To show their macho, his followers will copy him, in
For many years, the Walton family has owned the state of Arkansas. Their collective wealth exceeds $150 billion, yet Arkansas is one of the poorest states in the nation. All that money, and very little has trickled down. Perhaps you have seen the ads on national television about how much Walmart cares
