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The "Shock Doctrine" Comes to Your Neighborhood Classroom

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By David Sirota - Sep. 06 (News Analysis) - "Let's hope the fiscal crisis doesn't get better too soon. It'll slow down reform." -- Tom Watkins, a consultant, summarizes the corporate education reform movement's current strategy to the Sunday New York Times.

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Failed Education Reform in Chile Prompts Hunger Strikes, Protests by Thousands of Students

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Aug. 04 (News Report) - They are demanding an end to privatized education in Chile, which has left generations of students deep in debt.

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In Pennsylvania, Suspicious Erasing on State Exams at 89 Schools

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Michael Winerip - Aug. 02 (News Analysis) - In April, Dale Mezzacappa attended a panel discussion on cheating sponsored by the Education Writers Association. At the time, she was one of three staff reporters for The Notebook, a community newspaper and Web site that covers the Philadelphia public schools.

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Matt Damon Defends Teachers Against 'Sh***y' Reason.tv

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - Aug. 02 (News Report) - Following his keynote address, the actor took offense to a Reason.tv reporter who contended that, as opposed to the environment faced by teachers in a tenure system, the lack of job security in acting functions as an incentive for hard work.

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Bill Gates: Was the $5 Billion Worth It?

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By JASON L. RILEY, Bill Gates - Jul. 24 (Editorial) - A decade into his record-breaking education philanthropy, Bill Gates talks teachers, charters—and regrets. 'It's hard to improve public education—that's clear. As Warren Buffett would say, if you're picking stocks, you wouldn't pick this one." Ten years into his record-breaking philanthropic push for school reform, Bill Gates is sober—and willing to admit some missteps. "It's been about a decade of learning," says the Microsoft co-founder whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is now the nation's richest charity. Its $34 billion in assets is more than the next three largest foundations (Ford, Getty and Robert Wood Johnson) combined, and in 2009 it handed out $3 billion, or $2 billion more than any other donor. Since 2000, the foundation has poured some $5 billion into education grants and scholarships. Seated in his office at the new Gates Foundation headquarters located hard by the Emerald City's iconic Space Needle, Mr. Gates says that education isn't only a civil-rights issue but also "an equity issue and an economic issue. . . . It's so primary. In inner-city, low-income communities of color, there's such a high correlation in terms of educational quality and success."

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Teaching Empathy to the ‘Me’ Generation

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Miller-McCune - By Eric Leake - Jul. 18 (Special Report) - A Midwestern university experiments in teaching empathy not merely through classroom curriculum, but by having students live the lives of the working poor. The six participating students and their community partners are introduced in turn. Diana Crandall, a first-year psychology major in a smart black jacket and tie, talks about the children she worked with through the Children’s Hunger Alliance. “I know that I can’t walk away from this and be the same person I was before.”

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The Finland phenomenon

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Denver Post - By David Sirota: - Jul. 09 (Opinion) - When I heard the news last week that the Department of Education is aiming to subject 4-year-olds to high-stakes testing, all I could do is shake my head in disbelief and despondently mutter a slightly altered riff off "The Big Lebowski's" Walter Sobchak: Four-year-olds, dude.

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The Finland Phenomenon -

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

In These Times - By David Sirota - Jul. 08 (Review) - though we already “test students in the United States more than any other nation,” our students “perform well below those of other industrialized countries in math and science.” Yet the Obama administration, backed by corporate foundations, is nonetheless intensifying testing at all levels, as if doing the same thing and expecting different results is innovative “reform” rather than what it’s always been: insanity. In light of this craziness, it’s no wonder we’re being out-educated by countries going in the opposite policy direction.

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Bipartisan Bill Seeks to Remake Teacher Training Programs - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Education Week - By Alyson Klein - Jun. 22 (News Report) - Teacher training programs would be held accountable for producing educators who demonstrate the ability to boost student achievement before they even graduate, under a bill introduced today by a powerful, bipartisan trio of senators.

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$17M 'Grow Your Own Teachers' Program Yields Just 43 Educators

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Education Week - By Hannah Hess - Jun. 17 (News Report) - Illinois has invested more than $17 million to recruit parents, classroom aides and other school employees from low-income communities for a teacher certification program aimed at replenishing the supply of teachers in some of its most hard-to-staff schools. But after five years, the push to harvest homegrown educators has yielded only 43 teachers.

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For-Profit Colleges Spend Much Less On Educating Students Than Public Universities

Wed, 25 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Chris Kirkham - May. 25 (News Report) - For-profit colleges devote less than a third of what public universities spend on educating students, even though the for-profit institutions charge nearly twice as much as their public counterparts for tuition, according to new federal government data released Thursday.

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Why Every Student Should Learn Journalism Skills

Tue, 24 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

PBS - By Tina Barseghian - May. 24 (Interview) - How do we make schools more relevant to students? Teach them the skills they need in the real world, with tools they use every day. That's exactly what Esther Wojcicki, a teacher of English and journalism at Palo Alto High School in Palo Alto, Calif., is attempting to do with the recent launch of the website 21STcenturylit.

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Teaching Beyond the Test, to Make Room Again for Current Events

Sun, 22 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Michael Winerip - May. 22 (Special Report) - To Robert Barry, a senior at Farmington High School, it seems normal to have a war or two going on while you’re growing up. “Afghanistan started when we were in third grade,” he said. “We heard about it, but it’s in the background — we stopped noticing it.”

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The DeVos Family: Meet the Super-Wealthy Right-Wingers Working With the Religious Right to Kill Public Education

Tue, 10 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Rachel Tabachnick - May. 10 (Investigative Report) - By now you've surely heard of the Kochs. Meanwhile, the powerful, wealthy DeVos family has remained largely under the radar, while leading a stealth assault on America's schools.

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Back to school for the billionaires

Wed, 04 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

iWatch News - By Rita Beamish - May. 04 (Special Report) - Microsoft chairman Gates, computer magnate Michael Dell, investor Eli Broad, and the Walton family of Wal-Mart fame have collectively poured some $4.4 billion into school reform in the last decade through their private foundations.

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On the Ground with a "Gap Year"

Tue, 03 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Gregory Kristof - May. 03 (Opinion) - When college does roll around, you’ll already have gone through your own freshman orientation. After getting lost in a remote village because I was seeking a familiar temple but was approaching it from a completely different direction, I learned that where you are going is not all that matters. Where you are coming from matters, too.

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Balance Your Budget by Cleaning House - Do Your Job Better

Tue, 03 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Michael J. Bugeja - May. 03 (Opinion) - As we approach the end of another academic term, some institutions are still living off of stimulus money that did little to inspire solutions to mammoth budget cuts looming for the 2012 academic year, which promises to be one of the most difficult in memory for higher education.

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The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries

Sun, 01 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Dave Eggers, NÍnive Clements Calegari - May. 01 (Opinion) - When we don’t get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers. We don’t say, “It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!” No, if the results aren’t there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition. And yet in education we do just that. When we don’t like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don’t like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources. Compare this with our approach to our military: when results on the ground are not what we hoped, we think of ways to better support soldiers. We try to give them better tools, better weapons, better protection, better training. And when recruiting is down, we offer incentives.

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When standardized test scores soared in D.C., were the gains real?

Sun, 27 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

USA Today - By Jack Gillum, Marisol Bello - Mar. 27 (News Report) - ..seventh-graders in one Noyes classroom averaged 12.7 wrong-to-right erasures...the average ..in all d.c. schools was less than 1. this is an abnormal pattern.

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Darling-Hammond: U.S. vs highest-achieving nations in education

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Linda Darling Hammond - Mar. 22 (Review) - the first ever international summit on teaching...last week in new york city showed...that the united states has been pursuing an approach to teaching almost diametrically opposed to that pursued by the highest-achieving nations.

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The Answer Sheet - How Bill Gates misinterprets ed facts

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Richard Rothstein - Mar. 11 (Comment) - ...but his specific presecriptions and the urgency he attaches to them are based on the misrepresentation....let's examine these factual claims

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President Obama discusses education budget plan at Baltimore-area school

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Baltimore Sun - By Jean Marbella, Liz Bowie - Feb. 14 (News) - President Barack Obama's motorcade arrived at 10:10 a.m. Monday at Parkville Middle School and Center of Technology in Baltimore County, passing about 100 spectators who lined the streets near the school. Among the friendlier throngs were a group of protesters who called for him to, as their signs said, "STOP Reckless Spending." The president was in town to announce educational priorities in his 2012 budget.

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Ohio woman jailed for sending kids to school just wanted a choice

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

CNN - Jan. 29 (Comment) - If you lived in a crime-ridden neighborhood where your home was broken into a dozen times and the school your children were zoned to was low-performing, wouldn't you take drastic measures to ensure they got a quality education?

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Economics and Morality

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Jan. 10 (Opinion) - The first thing one should say is that our system does reward hard work, up to a point. Other things equal, those who put more in will earn more. But a lot of other things are, in fact, not remotely equal. These days, America is the advanced nation with the least social mobility (pdf), except possibly for Britain. Access to good schools, good health care, and job opportunities depends on lot on choosing the right parents.

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The upward mobility gap

Sun, 02 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Doyle McManus - Jan. 02 (Opinion) - College-educated Americans live in a different country than high school dropouts. The best way to mend the divide is by providing access to a decent education.

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