Elementary and Secondary Education
Advice to the Governor: Push for higher standards
Click here for more advice for the governor Discussion of education issues in this year’s race for governor has often centered on the state’s recent decision to join the effort […]
Can an index lead to more creative thinking?
This past July Newsweek reported on an emerging “Creativity Crisis.” According to research described in their report, American kids are steadily losing their creativity. Presciently, just a few days before […]
Boston charities set ambitious education goals
When the kindergarten and first-grade chorus members from the Haynes Early Education Center in Roxbury closed the program with an uplifting rendition of “We Are The World,” they might as […]
Teachers are not to blame
in the past few months, President Obama, Gov. Deval Patrick, and the press have practically made “education reform” synonymous with “firing teachers.” The president praised a Rhode Island school superintendent […]
About-face
The Death and Life of The Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education By Diane RavitchNew York, Basic Books, 283 pages diane ravitch is the preeminent […]
A high-stakes education test
The controversy over federal education standards that the Massachusetts Board of Education approved this morning would be great material for an MCAS question that requires multilayered, critical thinking. That’s because […]
Mixed messages on longer school day?
Longer school days lead to big gains in student achievement. Or maybe they don’t. It’s easy to scratch your head and wonder which is true after reading two new studies […]
Tap colleges, firms for STEM educators
There is a desperate need for improved STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – education in America. A troubling STEM achievement gap is growing between US K-12 students and […]
In defense of a B +
There’s nothing quite like identify fraud to capture the imagination. Cases like “Clark Rockefeller” and now, Adam Wheeler – accused of faking his way into Harvard, and nearly into a […]
Boarding school behind bars
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A setback for diversity
Read the response to “A Setback for Diversity” here. prodded by financial incentives offered by the Obama administration, Massachusetts and most other states are loosening restrictions on establishing charter schools. […]
Time for a renovation
our region and nation are coping with how to meet the economic and civic demands of the 21st century.The economic downturn has placed heightened attention on these demands, but the […]
Putting teachers on notice
When it comes to efforts to turn around failing schools, the nation’s smallest state is making some of the biggest waves. In January, Rhode Island’s new education commissioner, Deborah Gist, […]
Charters are closing the gap
Read the opposite view in “A Setback for Diversity” here. for decades, education policymakers have attempted to bridge the yawning achievement gap between affluent white students and poor black and […]
Contract a sign of things to come?
If teacher effectiveness has become the watchword of efforts to turn around failing schools, Washington, D.C., has been ground zero for this battle. The city’s reform-minded superintendent, Michelle Rhee, hasn’t minced […]
The new paradigm on bullying
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Boston superintendent on hot seat
Boston Schools Superintendent Carol Johnson said today she is “distressed” by the way teachers are evaluated in the city, but couldn’t explain why evaluations aren’t being conducted regularly as required […]
School turnarounds
The new education reform law signed with great fanfare last month by Gov. Deval Patrick is designed to address one of the most urgent tasks facing public schools: the persistent […]
Reform in the real world
it sounded so easy. How could I not ace a college class called “Going to High School in America?” I had, after all, just finished going to high school in […]
Correspondence
IT’S TIME TO LEARN WHAT WORKS IN THE CLASSROOM Who doesn’t want to believe that teachers matter? It makes intuitive sense. It’s what any good teacher knows instinctively. And now […]
Nonprofit shows results with troubled kids
where some see reason for despair, Matt Stone sees possibility. Stone is the Massachusetts manager for Youth Villages, a nonprofit that aims to replace some residential services for troubled youth […]
A tangled web in Gloucester
The mess that has been made over the handling of a proposed charter school in Gloucester offers a cautionary tale of what happens when a process that is supposed to […]
School facts not friendly to Menino, but that’s not the biggest problem
The troubled state of the Boston public schools is Mayor Tom Menino’s Achilles’ heel. The woeful performance of the schools has surfaced over and over during the mayoral campaign, including […]