Joanne Jacobs

Datelined April 1, Education Gladfly has the latest in education news:

Next Friday, the American Enterprise Institute will host an event to celebrate the release of Frederick M. Less’s newest book, Hey Baby, Don’t be Stupid!, an elaboration of Less’s “tough love” theory of education reform. In his latest work, the twelfth so far this year, Less argues that failing schools need to do more to humiliate and mock their low-performing students. He writes, “If NCLB is designed to bring sunlight and shame upon bad schools, but the schools don’t pass that shame along to their students, how is this whole thing supposed to work? Tougher love, baby!” Less suggests, for example, that teachers make struggling youngsters the objects of class scorn by requiring them to wear scarlet “Fs,” or allow bullies to administer vicious wedgies and swirlies to academic underachievers.

See also Checker Finn’s no-holds-barred memoir, “A Million Little Pieces of Chalk,” and a Fordham report revealing “home-schooled youngsters receive as much as 8,459 percent less state and local money than their district school counterparts.”