One of life’s more vexing minor challenges is picking which sentences in a given Thomas Friedman column to mock. I’ll start here:
Businesses prefer to invest with the Jetsons more than the Flintstones, which brings me to the subject of this column.
Stuff like this elevates preemptive self-parody to high art. The facile Jetsons / Flintstones analogy [...]
All Posts Tagged: 'Washington Post'
Friedman: Only Huge Corporate Tax Cuts Can Save Us
Un-businesslike
In his Post profile of school reform apostate Diane Ravitch, Nick Anderson makes the same mistake I complained about a couple of weeks ago (here and here): using “market-oriented” as a shorthand description of the principles animating reform. For example:
Duncan’s biggest idea is market-oriented: He seeks to provide incentives for reform, offering billions of dollars [...]
The Soul of Trinity
I heartily recommend Daniel DeVise’s profile of Trinity Washington University president Pat McGuire in this weekend’s Washington Post magazine. McGuire and her colleagues embody much of what is good and right about higher education. By transforming a failing women’s college into thriving university dedicated to serving minority and first-generation students, she is working in the [...]
Squash the Hype
This fall George Washington University became the first college in the country to dole out athletic scholarships for squash. Not exactly known as a sport for the masses, the school is now handing out $10-20,000 squash scholarships to Exeter grads, a move that is, apparently, worth a complimentary article in the Washington Post.
QUICK Hits
Are promoting teacher quality and promoting equal access to good teachers mutually exclusive? Ed Trust doesn’t think so. (Education Trust)
If parents are still their child’s first and most important teacher, will proposed Delaware legislation help them play a more active role? (Delaware Online)
Could the head of a teachers union find happiness running a school system? [...]
Grocery Stores, Banks, and…Schools?
It costs money to be poor. As the feature article in yesterday’s Washington Post Style section lays out, individuals living below the poverty line pay more for many things middle and upper income people consider basics, including food and banking services.
These markets–for fresh food from grocery stores, and checking and savings accounts from mainstream banks–have [...]
The Myth of Too Many Great Students
In the course of a witty and poignant reflection on his daughter’s college search, Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post writes:
The dirty secret of the American educational system is that there’s a glut of good kids — excellent grades, first-rate test scores, a blizzard of extracurriculars. We’ve all read the stories of the despairing admissions [...]
Journalists and Charter Schools
Eduwonkette has some beef with the Washington Post’s recent coverage of charter schools, specifically the Post’s claim that public charter schools are outperforming district-run public schools (thanks Chad) on student achievement measures. Accompanying the test score results, the Post reported on the successful practices many schools engage in as reasons for their high scores – [...]
Public Goods
The Washington Post deserves praise for the series they’ve been running recently on charter schools. But this graphic is mislabeled and misleading. Charter schools are public schools too, and it’ll be nice when they’re seen as complementary, friendly competition to traditional public school systems.
Politics and Student Loans
In today’s Washington Post, Kevin Burns, the Executive Director of America’s Student Loan Providers, which represents dozens of student loan companies, takes issue with a May 5th Washington Post editorial supporting the Direct Loan program. It’s not surprising that the leader of an organization dedicated to supporting private student loan companies wouldn’t like an editorial [...]
Exaggeration
The Post story on the Reading First study begins: “Students enrolled in a $6 billion federal reading program that is at the heart of the No Child Behind law…”
Wait. It’s only a $6 billion program if you add up the total funding over six years (I think, I’m writing this on a plane). That’s a [...]
Paying for Public School
It may seem strange to pay to attend a public school, but this article in Sunday’s Washington Post reports on parents who do just that. In most public school choice arrangements additional costs are absorbed by the school district or state, but in some cases parents are willing to pay ‘tuition’ for their child to [...]
The School Budget Crisis That Wasn’t
There’s something strange about the front-page school budget crisis story in the Washington Post this morning, titled “Housing Downturn Squeezes Schools.”
All the major elements are there. “The rapid cooling of the Washington area’s real estate market has hit school systems with force,” we are told. There are “financial hard times.” “As can be seen with [...]
Depressing Education-Related Newspaper Correction of the Day
From the Post:
A Nov. 25 Outlook article on young people’s knowledge of American history and government incorrectly said a survey found that U.S. high school students had missed almost half the questions on a civic literacy test. The students were in college.
Linda Perlstein’s Tested
At any given moment, there’s a limited amount of room in the general consciousness for books about education, and over the past few months a lot of that space has been occupied by Linda Perlstein’s new book, Tested. Which, as I explain in my review in this month’s Washington Monthly, is too bad. Tested is [...]
Pre-K in Virginia and Beyond
Washington Post reports on Virginia’s pre-k debate: targeted or universal, which is better? Virginia’s only the latest of a string of states trying and testing different pre-K models. Education Sector’s solution here.
Intended Consequences
There’s an old saying: “Beware of unintended consequences.” It’s good advice for long-term planning. It’s also an important principle for identifying facile policy arguments, like those in this WaPost op-ed, in which a local second-grade teacher claims that the No Child Left Behind Act, written to help low-income and minority students, actually harms them.
This kind [...]
Selective Opinion Gathering
I can’t believe this WaPo “What do you think of the takeover?” piece with comments from parents and educators doesn’t include a single voice representing schools East of the River. And three out of four speakers are linked to schools West of Rock Creek Park.
The Grad Rate Tourney Bracket
Turns out Georgetown is for real, at least on the hardwood. But graduation rates? Not so much. For a look at how the March Graduation Rate madness played out, see yesterday’s Washington Post Op-chart here, from New America’s Lindsey Luebchow and yrs truly.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
This past Saturday, the Washington Post ran a pointed op-ed by Colbert King describing the dismal state of disrepair in one of the district’s elementary schools. With a proper amount of outrage and incredulity, King correctly asks, who is responsible for this and how do we hold them accountable?
Good questions that need to be answered [...]
Lowering Student Loan Default Rates: What One Consortium of Historically Black Institutions Did to Succeed 
College and Career-Ready: Using Outcomes Data to Hold High Schools Accountable for Student Success
03/11/10 | Kevin Carey is quoted on the rising costs of education in The Economist.
03/10/10 | Chad Aldeman's False Fronts paper is quoted on Accuracy in Academia.
03/09/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on Federal Family Education Loan defaults on The Huffington Post.
03/09/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on loan origination on the Firedog Lake blog.
03/07/10 | Kevin Carey calls for a Race to the Top in higher education in a column in The Chronicle of Higher Education.