Credit for MOOCs? The American Council on Education will review up to 10 MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses, and recommend whether they should be eligible for college credit. (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

A 71-year-old dentist with more than $500,000 in debt. The king of all outliers in the ongoing saga of student loan debt woes. (Los Angeles Times)

Keeping the best. D.C.Continue Reading »

A year ago, Adrian Fenty was the mayor of Washington, DC and Michelle Rhee was the chancellor of DC Public Schools. Rhee had made overhauling the DC system of teacher evaluation the centerpiece of her controversial and widely noted reforms. Instead of the standard system of seniority-based raises and nobody ever being fired for bad teaching, Rhee wanted to give the best teachers big raises and Continue Reading »

One of the most important things to understand about the national teachers unions is their profoundly conservative world view. This is small “c” conservatism, which means preserving existing conditions or institutions and limiting change. The decision by the National Education Association’s membership to accept the widely held belief that how much students learn ought to influence teachers’ evaContinue Reading »

We are interested in talking with D.C. teachers about the implementation of the new IMPACT evaluation system. Now that the program has been in place for a while, what are its strengths and drawbacks? How effectively is it being used? How has it affected your teaching, your curriculum, the atmosphere in your classroom? Are you benefiting from the advice of master teachers? Do you find the evaluaContinue Reading »