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Education
September 26, 2011

Proven Approaches to Dropout Prevention

Tomorrow the state’s Joint Committee on Education will meet to discuss a raft of proposals to address Massachusetts’ inability to bring down its dropout rate. It’s about time. The problem is that few of the proposals actually do much more than beef...
Education
August 30, 2011

Parent Power

(image from DropOutNation.net) Used to be that Massachusetts was the epicenter of most of the innovations occurring in education. We had the best standards in the nation. The best student tests, best teacher tests, a standout accountability office, the most advanced charter...
Education
August 22, 2011

What if Bill Gates rewarded results?

Last winter, two things clarified my views on the utility of the Gates Foundation in education policy. One was an opportunity I had to spend time at the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, an Oklahoma-based foundation that focuses primarily on plant and seed...
Education
August 18, 2011

Setting the Record Straight

When blogging, sometimes you shorthand — summarize too quickly. In yesterday’s blog, I suggested that Rick Hess, American Enterprise Institute scholar and EdWeek blogger, has been straddling the fence on things like national standards and assessments, generally giving the US ED the...
Education
August 16, 2011

National standards' process and substance abuse

For a while it looked like all of thinking Washington was gaga over US Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s agenda. The only opposition that stirred was from the teachers unions which came out this summer with their shortlist of 13 things they hated...
Education
August 15, 2011

Arne Duncan gets sent to the principal's office

US Education Secretary Arne Duncan is losing his allies fast. As the Huffington Post noted in early July, At its annual meeting in Chicago, The National Education Association’s Representative Assembly passed Saturday New Business Item C., a strongly worded piece that comprehensively...
Education
August 11, 2011

Science for Consumers

The Massachusetts department of education (DESE) is under way with a revision to the state’s science standards. Context here is that we have had strong science standards in place since 2006, which served as the basis for students preparing for 2010—the year...
Education
August 10, 2011

False Alarm on Science

In a nicely timed alarm, the state’s department of education is noting that kids aren’t learning science as well as they are learning reading and math. You can never rest on your laurels, but this strikes me as alarmism of the worst...
Education
August 7, 2011

Do exam schools add value?

Historically, many of Massachusetts’ political and economic leaders have built their success on the education received at the city’s historic exam schools—Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy and the John D. O’Bryant High School of Mathematics and Science, which in total enroll...
Education
July 2, 2011

Virtually There

If Massachusetts has because of lack of leadership within the Board and the Department of Education, ground to a halt on digital learning, other states are moving fast. Let me give you two examples — one (Michigan) where the governor is particularly...