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In a letter to various education organizations, Suzanne Immerman of the U.S. Department of Education wrote of the need for education reform and shared the following statistics:
“Right now, 25 percent of our students fail to graduate high school, and as many as 60 percent of college freshmen need remedial education. Millions of jobs are [...]

I recently read a piece from the fall 2009 edition of Education Next called “Reward Less, Get Less: Student performance gaps are easily explained.” The article came to my attention because it mentions Dr. Chavis in light of the documentary film he was in called Flunked.
Flunked looks at what’s dragging down American public schools but [...]

Can anyone think of New Year’s Resolutions for public education? Focusing on middle and high school troubles, here are a few I’ve rattled off the top of my head:
1. Put the interests of students before the interests of adults.
2. Focus on academics.
3. Focus on classroom management and discipline.
4. Have high expectations.
5. Teach students to think [...]

Wow, here’s a headline to get your attention: “Detroit parents want DPS teachers, officials jailed over low test scores”. The Detroit News ran this story on December 12, 2009, after outraged parents discovered their children had the worst math scores in the nation!

The scores were from the National Assessment of Educational Progress test. The [...]

About a month ago I wrote about potentially promising legislation making its way through the California legislature. Bill SBX5 1 was intended to make California competitive for the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top funds. After the bipartisan bill passed in the California Senate, it died in the Assembly Education Committee–largely in part, it seems, [...]

The mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, recently announced his intention to use student test scores as a determinant in deciding whether to grant teachers tenure. Of course the teachers’ union is vehemently opposed to the proposal.
Bloomberg is looking to the New York legislature to require all the state’s districts to implement “data-driven systems” [...]

It appears there is a glimmer of hope for the school reform movement in California.
The California Senate approved Senate Bill X5 1 last week, which repeals the state’s cap on charter schools and provides students at low-performing schools with the choice to attend better schools. It also “encourages school districts to reward teachers who consistently [...]

The Cato Institute recently aired a podcast called “A Charter School That Works.” Caleb Brown interviewed Ben Chavis about American Indian Public Charter School’s model as well as replicating successful charter school models on a larger scale.
Ben pointed out some of the roadblocks to reform. One problem is that underperforming public schools get monetarily rewarded. [...]

Last week Nicolas D. Kristof wrote a widely popular column–so popular in fact that the New York Times eventually cut off comments–on both the importance of high-quality teachers in the classroom and the ways in which teachers’ unions stymie effective education reform. For a look at “rubber rooms” and union strangleholds and a call to [...]