Latest News and Comment from Education

Thursday, August 21, 2014

8-21-14 Answer Sheet

Answer Sheet:








Strauss: Is doing less harm enough for Education Secretary Duncan?
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said today via a blog post that he has decided to allow most states to apply for permission from the Education Department to push back to 2015-16 a requirement that they use student standardized test scores in teacher’s evaluations. This marked a step beyond flexibility Duncan offered last year, when he said states could seek flexibility from making personnel deci

For first time, minority students expected to be majority in U.S. public schools this fall
For the first time in U.S. history, ethnic and racial minorities are projected to make up the majority of students attending American public schools this fall, ending the white-majority population that has existed from the beginnings of the public education system. The U.S. Education Department projected that this fall, the percentage of students who are white […]

Books that college freshmen should have read over the summer
It has become a common practice at many colleges and universities to assign to incoming freshmen a book or other reading selection over the summer —sometimes as a requirement, sometimes just as a suggestion — so they can all come together to participate in a discussion about a particular theme during the school year. In some […]

A shocking statistic about the quality of education research
In 1968, an article in Kappan magazine titled “The Need for Replication in Education Research” by education Professor Robert H. Bauernfeind said: The principle of replication is the cornerstone of scientific inquiry. This principle holds that under similar conditions, one should obtain similar results. Replication has long been an essential aspect of research in the […]


8-20-14 Answer Sheet
Answer Sheet: The strategic campaign needed to save public education — in nine stepsLeaders of the school standardized test-based reform’ movement have been very smart about using public relations and intentional messaging to their benefit, something their critics have failed to do. Arthur H. Camins, director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institut