If you Google the terms “teacher shortage” and “teacher turnover,” your hits will light up rather forebodingly. Obviously local conditions affect individual districts in a variety of ways, so not all schools or regions are suffering to the same degree. However, there does seem to be a fairly broad-based national problem of recruitment and retention of K-12 teachers that is… Read more →
The School Improvement Grants program poured $7 billion down the drain between 2010 and 2015, as a recent Washington Post article pointed out. One of the Obama Administration’s signature efforts in education, which pumped billions of federal dollars into overhauling the nation’s worst schools, failed to produce meaningful results, according to a federal analysis. Test scores, graduation rates and college… Read more →
Two years ago, I published a commentary in my local newspaper entitled “Data Must Drive Education Decisions” that read in part as follows: “I have a suggestion for those who believe standardized testing in our public schools is untenable, unreasonable, and unfair: look at the national and local data on the numbers of college freshmen who require remedial coursework when they… Read more →
Low-level racism is a national contagion, no matter how politely expressed these attitudes and behaviors may be. However, even the mildly afflicted are capable of causing catastrophes when they are police, school teachers, and public officials. Although it is likely true that only a very small faction of Americans are virulent racists, when those in power act on bland impulses… 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 →
The barely suppressed rage and dysfunction that seems to pulse like a distended vein right beneath the surfaces of our cities and communities seems more and more to express itself through the barrel of a gun or horrid verbal and physical attacks. Given what is going on around us daily, I have no idea how I would seek to reassure… Read more →
America is a sports-mad nation. Our love for professional and college athletics often begins right on the tee-ball field and races up through high school. Anyone who has ever taught or worked in an American high school is familiar with the immutable rhythm of the fall semester—first football game, big game against rival school, Homecoming game, and fingernail-biting last game… Read more →
We, as educators, hold this truth to be self-evident: The subject that each of us teaches is the single most important one to the futures of our students. However, when I was a measly little kid plowing my way through K-12, it always struck me that no one ever bothered to explain why I was spending countless hours learning what… Read more →
Just as any other teacher, I send my students out the door at the end of the school year with my hope that they are able to take what they have learned and make good lives for themselves—but I know I don’t succeed with every student. Students may struggle in school—and later life—for a variety of reasons that are unrelated… Read more →
K-12 education is in the midst of a national crisis: no money. School states across the country are struggling with the long-term viability of their public education budgets—Illinois, California, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Alaska are among the most visible states in this long parade—due to declines in local tax revenue and state support, and many local school boards are now discovering… Read more →