In a shameless act of movie flacking, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce just published a guide for business leaders on school reform that is linked to and reinforces the skewed vision of public education portrayed in the movie “Waiting for Superman.” Meddling in an area about which it obviously doesn’t know much, the chamber issued… Read more »

In knowing the great strength and legacy of public education in the United States, we the American people seek to implant these principles ….(this is where “best teachers,” “best principals” and “excellence” come in…) #1 Principle: Children are our most important treasure. The education of children in our public schools will be based on egalitarian,… Read more »

We don’t have to wait for Superman to save our public schools. We can save our schools ourselves. Right now. Without firing the teachers or disbanding their unions. Without creating more standardized tests. Without pitting schools against each other in a race for dollars which should rightfully be divided equally among the school-age children of… Read more »

You asked what keeps me running, which I assume means how I find the energy to stay on the road week after week, speaking to teachers, parents, school board members, and concerned citizens. These days, I am running because of an inner rage at the attacks on teachers and public education. I see one of… Read more »

The 2010 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll on U.S. schools reminds us that Americans do not believe that the federal No Child Left law helps improve education. The 2008 Kappa survey found that four out of five people think classroom-based evidence of student learning, such as grades, teacher observations, or samples of student work (the most… Read more »

One of the signature issues of businesspeople and conservative Republicans for the past 30 years has been merit pay. They believe in competition, and they believe that financial rewards can be used to incentivize better performance, so it seems natural for them to conclude that merit pay or performance pay would incentivize teachers to produce… Read more »

I never miss reading the newspaper comics. Not for entertainment, but because I think their creators are some of the most intelligent and well-informed people on the public scene. As a group, they have mastered the subtleties of language, politics, philosophy, and human behavior. Right about now I am struck by how many comics are… Read more »

The most rigorous study of performance-based teacher compensation ever conducted in the United States shows that a nationally watched bonus-pay system had no overall impact on student achievement—results released today that are certain to set off a firestorm of debate. Nearly 300 middle school mathematics teachers in Nashville, Tenn., voluntarily took part in the Project… Read more »

As we approach the beginning of a new school year, we find that education is in a crisis primarily due to the standardized testing mania that currently exists in the country. Teachers and parents need to ask themselves if the emphasis on testing and the time devoted to test preparation is helping to improve education,… Read more »

Remarkable transformations in pre-K-12 education have occurred over the past 30 years; some have actually enriched schools and school systems by implementing systemic efficiencies. Others have served to heighten awareness of all that effective teaching actually entails. But many have been devastating. They have weakened the work being done in pre-K-12 classrooms, and set in… Read more »