NewsTrust - Middle School - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Why Fire Teachers?

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Megan McArdle - Mar. 08 (Opinion) - I think there are some jobs that are too important to let any consideration intrude other than the best way to get the job done. Nuclear power plants, firefighters, poison control--I don't want to let other social goals, no matter how laudable, hamper their mission. Teaching is one of those jobs.

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Duncan details $150 billion education stimulus

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

CNN - By Campbell Brown, Arne Duncan - Jan. 30 (Interview) - CB: Mr. Secretary, the President's new stimulus plan includes a massive $150 billion increase in federal money for education. Walk us through what the priorities are and when parents can expect to see results. DUNCAN: This is an extraordinary opportunity and if we want to become a strong economy again, the best thing we can do is have an educated work force. So this is a huge, huge opportunity to make things dramatically better for schools and for school children around the country and at the higher Ed level as well. So the stimulus package is going to do a number of things. It's going to help us a tremendous unmet capital needs and so it's really going to be a huge opportunity to invest in infrastructure and several ready projects that we want to get to work on very early on, late spring and through the summer. We want to save literally hundreds of thousands of teaching jobs. We're very, very worried about tremendous cuts, devastating cuts in school districts and states around the country. We want to stay those off going into the fall. We want to continue to raise the bar academically, raise standards, raise expectations, and there's opportunities in the stimulus package to do that.

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Should Teachers Ignore Poverty's Impact?

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Jay Mathews - Nov. 28 (Opinion) - Owens described her effort to join the Philadelphia Teaching Fellows program, and her reaction to the prevailing view in that organization that good teachers should be able to raise the achievement of even the poorest kids. That is my belief, and the belief of the educators I most admire. But most Americans, including Owens, think people like me are wrongly discounting the effects of poverty and thus hurting, rather than helping, the national movement to raise the level of instruction in impoverished neighborhoods.

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Cookie-cutter schools don't improve student achievement

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Richard W. Clark - Mar. 24 (Opinion) - None of these explanations of why children learn requires that programs adopted in one school be the same as those in another. Districts spend heavily when they seek uniformity by training teachers in the "one-right-way" and then monitor compliance. They do so ignoring the reality that there is no one way that will work with all students in the varied circumstances of their lives. Because it doesn't work, districts that seek such uniformity invariably run out of resources and community support after a few years and new leaders are installed who pour their own magic potion on the district from their perch at the top.

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A moment with ... Jonathan Kozol, author

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 12:40:16 -0700

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By John Marshall - Oct. 06 (Interview) - I've received more than 30,000 e-mails and letters from these teachers over the years. They never say they're quitting because of the kids -- these are the young idealists. They never put the blame on parents or community or administration. It's this goddamned testing mania -- it's taking every bit of the joy and spontaneity out of these little children. They also emphasize that the pressure to teach to tests is so absolute that almost all of the rest of the subjects either don't get taught or are taught only on a token basis. On how this trend can be turned around: This cannot be changed without transforming the "No Child Left Behind" Act. Either repeal it or radically revise it.

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Black Students Face Harsher Discipline

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 21:28:37 -0700

NPR - Sep. 29 (Interview) - Government data shows black students face much harsher discipline and are put of school more often than any other ethnic group for the similar offenses. Chicago Tribune reporter Howard Witt analyzes the report. Witt speaks with Andrea Seabrook.

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