We want our kids to grow up in a country where they have access to the best schools and the best teachers.

President Barack Obama

Election victory speech

November 7, 2012

In his victory speech Tuesday night President Obama reached out to the country to help him make the next four years a time of renewal and reaffirmation. There is no better place to launch such a shaContinue Reading »

Harkin-Enzi’s ESEA reauthorization bill attempts to find a middle ground on teacher and principal evaluations. On one hand, you have the Senate Republican plan supported by Secretary of Education-turned-Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) that would give states the option to develop these kinds of evaluation systems. On the other, you have the Obama administration’s ESEA waiver package that requiresContinue Reading »

Michael Agger of Slate asks: “Does a player’s speech predict how he’ll perform in the NFL?” (Slate)

Jay P. Greene on Diane Ravitch’s scholarship as an education historian: “All of this raises the same question that I raised before about whether Ravitch is really a great scholar.  She hardly seems like a serious person.  And it seems perfectly possiblContinue Reading »

Sometimes anti-establishment education reform thinkers, like other visionaries sharing a loose outlook on the world, get lumped together in a monolithic ball of thought that is easily digestible to those who have a different outlook or no outlook at all.  The tragic result of this is that details, diversity of ideas, and shades of perception are lost to external thinkers and policy makers.