One aspect of the education reform debate that persistently gives me pause is the claim that the top students are being short-changed in U.S. public education—specifically due to disproportionate time and money being spent on struggling students. I have attempted to address this argument both seriously and satirically, but each approach has brought primarily defense [...]
The elite minds at The Thomas B. Fordham Institute have unmasked a serious but neglected crisis in education: “[M]any high-achieving students struggle to maintain their elite performance over the years and often fail to improve their reading ability at the same rate as their average and below-average classmates. The study raises troubling questions: Is our [...]
For most of my adult life, almost 30 years, I have been an avid recreational and competitive cyclist, riding four to five days a week for as many as 10,000 miles in a year. I have been a part of the same riding community for almost that entire time, with organized rides taking place most [...]
Michael Vick has signed a $100 million contract to play for the Philadelphia Eagles over the next six years. Coming on the heels of a lengthy prison sentence and status as a third-string quarterback for the Eagles just a season ago, this mega-contract is part of, according to Ashley Fox at ESPN, “an amazing, redemptive [...]
[Part I: Poverty] Jim Taylor has entered the poverty and education debate by asking U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and billionaire/education entrepreneur Bill Gates a direct question: “I really don’t understand you two, the U.S. Secretary of Education and the world’s second richest man and noted philanthropist. How can you possibly say that public [...]
Thanks to education commentary and policy under President Obama and Secretary of Education Duncan, we don’t have to turn to George Orwell’s brilliant essays on politics and language or his classic 1984 to understand the reality of double-speak. By the end of 2010, the education focus of the Obama administration and the U.S. Department of [...]
The historical and current focus on test-based accountability to drive education evaluation and reform is often situated within another historical and current approach to judging U.S. public education—international comparisons. Just as we tend to misuse test data, specifically the SAT, to rank and label the quality of schools and state education systems, we do the [...]
In the comments of Diane Ravitch’s recent EdWeek Bridging Differences, “Why I Am Marching on July 30,” one comment captures the bankrupt support for the new reformer movement coming from Secretary Duncan, Bill Gates, and Michelle Rhee. paulhoss@hotmail.com takes this swipe at those such as Ravitch challenging the new reformers: “What to say about SOS? [...]
Lost in the exaggerated claims of “bad” teachers being at the core of all that ails education and the concurrent calls for greater teacher accountability, often linked to student test scores, is a careful consideration of why we have universal public education in a free society and what the role of the teacher is within [...]
A new slogan has appeared from the ranks of educators who know the new education reform movement to be misguided, uninformed, and powerful: “Those who can, teach. Those who cannot pass laws about teaching.” This is a parody of the demeaning, “Those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach.” It is this saying that is [...]
