This is going to piss off my educator friends, but I have a little advice for all those Ed.Ds who insist on being called “Doctor.” Stop. Just Stop. I get it. You worked hard for that Doctor of Education degree and you’re proud of it. Learning is a good thing. But when you use that honorific as a bludgeon with… Read more →
As school reforms go, it’s not sexy, it’s not new, and it’s not at all controversial. So it probably won’t get as much attention as Betsy DeVos being voted Donald Trumps’ worst cabinet member by readers of the New York Times, which is really saying something given that she’s in the same gaggle as Scott Pruitt of the Environmental Protection… Read more →
Is this the end of the valedictorian? asks AP’s Carolyn Thompson. Fewer high schools are naming a valedictorian: Some have dozens of honorees on graduation day, while others have stopped using grades to rank students. Reporting class rankings is going out of fashion too. About half of schools no longer report class rank, according to the National Association of Secondary… Read more →
School reform advocate Derrell Bradford and policy writer Andy Rotherham hit on it. Illinois education writer Tracy Dell’Angela has a blog focused on it. Teacher/education writer Robert Pondiscio said it was a factor in the anti-charter vote in Massachusetts last fall. And former Education Secretary Arne Duncan famously broached the subject in 2013. “It” is the long overdue conversation about… Read more →
I had a conversation the other day about family contributions–those fundraising donations usually requested each year by the PTA/PTO/PFA and/or raised by events hosted by those organizations. I’m genuinely perplexed by how my view of the situation is so off kilter with what I’ve read lately. There are many stories like this one about how wealthier suburban communities want to splinter… Read more →
Rigorous career-tech programs such as New Jersey’s Marine Academy of Science and Technology (MAST) prepare students for top colleges and careers, writes Catherine Gewertz in Education Week. However many career-and-college programs are selective — and primarily enroll middle-class white students. On a chilly spring morning, 18 teenagers clamber aboard a 65-foot research vessel and become marine scientists. In big blue nets,… Read more →