Dear Finland-lovers: The country’s academic achievement is not all it’s cracked up to be, writes Tom Loveless. (The Brown Center Chalkboard)

Oops. Economist Arnold Kling finds a “rather shocking mathematical error” in the AP Microeconomics Exam, thanks to the help of a student. (AskBlog)

Your good news story of the day. A Penn State senior basketball star creates a middle-school pContinue Reading »

Happy Birthday, NCLB. Education Week collected commentaries from some of the top education experts, including lawmakers and analysts, on No Child Left Behind and posted them on this page in commemoration of the bill’s 10-year-anniversary next week. The page also includes a fun word cloud that includes the responses from people who were asked to describe NCLB. (Education Week)

The cContinue Reading »

Since I, too, have visited Finland long enough to accumulate various anecdotes, statistics and observations supporting my pre-conceived policy preferences, I feel well-qualified to respond to Samuel Abrams’s TNR piece on the subject.

He’s right about one thing: they really do make their kids play outside in the cold. We visited an early childcare center where a bunch of 3- anContinue Reading »

In speaking at this year’s New Schools Schmooze-A-Thon, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was asked about teacher preparation. “I don’t care where teachers come from,” he replied, while stressing the need to attract more talented people into the profession and do a better job of evaluating their performance once they arrive. In other words, Duncan doesn’t believe Continue Reading »

In the course of presenting a very interesting paper on international college rankings at an accountability conference I co-hosted yesterday, Ben Wildavsky made an observation that I strongly endorse: international competition in higher education isn’t a zero-sum game. In fact, I think there’s a good argument that America would be better off if we no longer towered above most other Continue Reading »

A few weeks ago,  conservative education historian/contrarian Diane Ravitch was asked to judge a “best education reform idea” contest. The first entry came from the “Center for Union Facts,” a sort of clearinghouse for union-hating agitprop. The “Center” proposed to—and I’m not paraphrasing here—”demonize” teachers unions. With bContinue Reading »

What does the Finnish War of 1808 have to do with contemporary higher education policy in America? Plenty! You can read all about it in my new Chronicle of Higher Education column, here. Tweet Continue Reading »

We returned from Finland on Saturday, so here are my initial overall impressions, focused mostly on the implications for K–12 education. To begin, let me acknowledge that one can’t draw firm conclusions about cause and effect after a short visit. Spending a week in a far-off country means you return knowing a lot more than you knew, and a lot more than most people know back home. You̵Continue Reading »

A few years ago, while on vacation in Italy, my wife and I toured a winery in Tuscany and ended up spending an hour or so chatting with the in-house sommelier, a woman in her early thirties. After pouring a really terrific Vino Nobile de Montepulciano, she off-handedly mentioned that she had earned a law degree from a public university but had never practiced, deciding to pursue a career in winContinue Reading »