Coming out of a year that has left me ever less enamored of both our major political parties, their polarized and gridlocked behavior on Capitol Hill, their uninspiring candidates and ratty presidential campaigns, not to mention their antics in many a statehouse, I’m ready for a promising, credible third party....
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The central problem besetting K-12 education in the United States today is still—as for almost thirty years now—that far too few of our kids are learning nearly enough for their own or the nation’s good. And the gains we’ve made, though well worth making, have been meager (and largely...
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This post originally appeared as an op-ed column in the Columbus Dispatch.
Recent news that White Hat Management, the big, Ohio-based, profit-seeking charter-school operator, faces financial problems surely was received as an early Christmas present by many longtime charter opponents, particularly within the Buckeye State.
The company’s founder and leader, Akron industrialist...
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If you hope the Euro crashes, that this week’s Brussels summit fails, and that European commerce returns to francs, marks, lira, drachma, and pesetas, you may be one of those rare Americans who also seeks the demise of the Common Core State Standards Initiative in U.S. education. Crazy analogy? Please...
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Maybe it never should have been carved out of the old Department of Health, Education and Welfare in the first place, but the fact is that Jimmy Carter, politically indebted to the N.E.A. for his election (and unable to get out from the commitment he had made...
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On behalf of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, I am happy to announce that today our board elected Dr. Amber Winkler to the new position of vice president for research. This richly deserved promotion from director of research brings her wisdom and expertise onto...
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The Obama administration’s new waiver plan (officially here, and covered extensively here, here, and here—and elsewhere, I’m sure) doesn’t officially repeal the No Child Left Behind Act, but it is tantamount to making large-scale amendments to it. Which it does unilaterally, without even a thumbs-up from Congress.
Though the specific conditions...
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This week, teachers across the land are greeting students, assigning seats, issuing textbooks, struggling to remember everyone’s name—and doing their best to teach one of the most challenging lessons of the year: the events of September 11, 2001, why they happened, why they matter, and why we are commemorating them.
[pullquote]The...
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[caption id="" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Image by Cesar Blanco"][/caption]
Jay Greene has played many roles in American education, most of them useful, but as far as I can recall this is the first time he has sought to inhabit, interpret, and report on other people's fantasy lives. Is this...
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The gloves are off. What remained last week of bipartisanship on education in Washington has been buried. And education may yet turn into a major issue in the 2012 presidential race.
All this in the wake of Rick Perry's weekend entry into that race. Though the Governor has not (yet) put...
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