Acceleration is the new pandemic buzzword brought to you by pro-privatization school reformers. Students may have missed some in-person schooling, even though most learned remotely or in person. Still, the frenzy surrounding learning loss is mounting. The pandemic has given rise to a new way to reframe the old learning gap talk, with new terminology, […]
The Technology Cheating Problem Is Still a Problem
While many were appalled at the celebrity college entrance scandal, there’s another scandal that gets minimal attention. Students cheat with technology! Cheating has always been a problem in school but with technology it runs rampant. In the classroom, teachers curtail cheating by supervising students in person. They learn about students and become familiar with their […]
“Personalized Learning” is NOT Working for High School Students
Backed by major philanthropists and investors such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, the ed-tech industry has aggressively pushed the idea of “personalized learning.” But on the ground, the concept remains nebulous, and research evidence remains thin. ~Benjamin Herold. Education Week, September 21, 2017 Will students graduate high school with what they need to go […]
XQ Super Schools—Business Working to End Public High Schools
Laurene Powell Jobs and her XQ school bus are coming to us via television on major networks on September 8th. She wants to remake high schools. Powell Jobs would have you think that high schools haven’t changed for a hundred years. That’s not true. The American high school can certainly always improve, but the institution […]
Calling Nurturing Men to the Teaching Profession
Happy Father’s Day! I am proud to know many nurturing fathers who are also teachers and who fight for public education. I have also known men who are not fathers, but who are marvelous teachers, who view their students like their own children. Men are needed to teach in this country. There’s supposedly a teacher […]
Why Not Ditch Advanced Placement (AP) Classes?
If you have a high school student with college on their mind, chances are you are saving to pay for the myriad of standardized Advanced Placement (AP) tests they will need to take at the end of their classes. Each test, one for each subject, is $93. Students in U.S. Department of Defense Dependents Schools […]
Could Changing College Admissions Be the End of High-Stakes Testing?
Could it be that once the first domino falls the rest will follow? Leaders at eighty leading colleges and universities, including the Ivy League, are attempting to revise the application process to look at students and their personal interests! They want to focus less on the canned metrics. Are college and university leaders across the […]
School Reformers Who Blame Public Schools for Eliminating Special Education
I see Washington Post Columnist Jay Matthews as someone who usually cheerleads for privatization of public schools. I take issue with his Sunday Washington Post article “How can a special education student fail finals yet pass? Sadly, it’s easy.” Oh help! Is this not a case of the right hand not being able to find […]
What President Obama Got Right—Warning—It’s Wild and There Was No Drill!
OK. You don’t like Race to the Top or the corporate education agenda that all presidents subscribe to. Me neither. Maybe you don’t like a lot of President Obama’s policies and can’t wait for a new guy…or gal! I get it. But how can you not appreciate the way President Obama has been practicing his […]