Another research organization took a fresh look at the issue of remedial education, confirming once again that yes, our nation’s college goers are spending more than $1 billion to learn in college what they should have learned in high school. But what really jumped out from the Center for American Progress’ new report was just how widely states varied when it came… Read more →
Note: This post was adapted from a letter written to Laurene Powell Jobs, the founder of XQ. I was thrilled to read about XQ: The Super School Project–the kind of movement it will create, the opportunities it will provide to students in our high schools, and the impact such schools will have on our future leaders. I am a big fan… Read more →
Ninety percent of parents believe their children are performing at “grade level” or higher in their schoolwork, according to a Learning Heroes survey this spring. Yet only about a third of high school graduates are ready for college-level courses, writes Fordham’s Mike Petrilli in Education Next. Ignorance isn’t bliss, he argues. If students and their parents knew they weren’t on track… Read more →
It’s a weekday in mid-September, and most of the students on my reservation are out of school for the day. This free time for students is business as usual for teachers and administrators, who honor a gentleman’s agreement to attend the teacher training day provided by the Tribal Education Department of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. These tribes reside… Read more →
People loosely use the term “good schools and diversity” without looking into it or researching what that means. When you get below the surface, it means achievement for the white kids, but not for everybody else. That’s not good enough for me. Currently, my husband and I live in Broadview, a western suburb of Chicago, with our two daughters. Our… Read more →
I recently watched—for perhaps the hundredth time—the mother of all classic horror movies, the original 1931 Dracula starring the incomparable Bela Lugosi. The movie is always a pleasure, but something in particular about it struck me this time around. It was the silence. A generation of movie viewers raised on thumping movie scores, frequent explosions, and never-ending car chases would perhaps… Read more →
A decade ago, I reported on the first graduation ceremony at Chicago’s Spry Community Links High School, which I described at the time as a “quiet experiment to reinvent the high school experience for some of Chicago’s most vulnerable students.” Spry was, and still is, the only traditional Chicago public school that spans from preschool to high school. The high… Read more →
At schools near military bases, experienced teachers will be able to pick out the truly new faces in classrooms and at parent-teacher conferences. These will be children and parents of military families who have transferred into the community at the request of Uncle Sam. Military families present a special challenge for teachers and the education system in general. As a… Read more →
I have six words of advice for people who want to develop their writing talents: “Read a lot. Write a lot.” American students aren’t good writers because they don’t write enough, asserts Andrew Rotherham in U.S. News. That’s because English teachers “see far too many students to be able to assign the quantity of writing students need to do to become… Read more →
My family and I know an adorable toddler who loves to chase other children and kiss them. My soon-to-be 5-year-old daughter is mortified by him. When he comes to lay one on her, she screams “No!” Other adults watching have responded with approximations of, “Aw, come on. He just wants to give you a kiss. He loves you. Let him… Read more →