Gadfly praises Joe Williams’ populist book, Cheating Our Kids.
Joe Williams’s new book is written with all the vividness, verve, and emotion of a Jonathan Kozol tome, but with a message that will make serious school reformers cheer. Hard-hitting, packed with inflammatory anecdotes and devastating details, Cheating our Kids puts a human face on today’s education […]
Archive for May, 2008
WestEd’s Inside High School Reform looks at formerly low-performing schools that got better. Here are the author’s top 10 tips for improving high schools:
Treat teachers as the trained education professionals they are.
Hold students to high expectations.
Continually use school, teacher, and student data to decide what changes to make next.
Start with what you want students […]
Vernice Jones, a home-schooling blogger, wonders if the underclass is incapable of rising.
How helpful is it to know that their odds aren’t great? Don’t we know that? What is more helpful, to me, is the fact that when you mix education, exposure, and a little bit of opportunity, some children GREATLY benefit and can translate […]
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney wants to give a $100 laptop (to be developed by MIT) to every sixth through 12th grade student in the state. Maine gives laptops to seventh- and eighth-graders, the Boston Globe notes.
Three years after laptops were first handed out, teachers and students generally rave about it. But there is no […]
Newoldteacher, a graduate student in education and novice blogger (Oh, snap!), has one class that deals with content.
My professor is a real history professor from the real university I attend. He specializes in modern Islam and European colonialism in the Middle East. He wears bow-ties, tells us we’re wrong, criticizes us when we stay stupid […]
Is it possible to teach about a Bible course without the lawsuits? Maybe so, says the Christian Science Monitor.
Without academic knowledge of the Bible and its influence, many teachers say, pupils can’t understand their own literary, artistic, and cultural heritage. In a survey last spring, 90 percent of leading English teachers said biblical knowledge was […]
A British hospital is telling vistors not to coo over newborn babies.
Debbie Lawson, a ward sister at the special care baby unit, said: “We know people have good intentions and most cannot resist cooing over new babies but we need to respect the child.
“Cooing should be a thing of the past because these are little […]
It’s possible to get a college degree in video games. I think you have to do more than just play them, however.
Jonathan Kozol’s new book, The Shame of the Nation argues that underfunded and “segregated” inner-city schools don’t foster curiosity, like schools in Cuba. In Opinion Journal, Abigail Thernstrom says Kozol is long on anger and anecdotes, short on reality. In addition to calling for more funding, Kozol believes “the standards, testing and accountability ‘juggernaut’ has […]
Parents wonder whether children are learning from electronic media or being turned into drones. Experts disagree, reports the San Jose Mercury News.
“The less media in your child’s life, the better,” says Diane Levin, an education professor at Wheelock College in Boston and author of “Remote Control Childhood?: Combating the Hazards of Media Culture.”
“Anyone who keeps […]
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