Last month, I clearly stated some reasons why the Obama administration shouldn’t bother pursuing the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act — and why school reformers shouldn’t bother pushing it either. The most important reason of all had to do with the reality that there was ultimately more for the National Education Association, [...]
On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, I discuss the reasons why improving the quality of America’s teaching corps is tantamount to improving student achievement and closing the achievement gap between blacks, Latinos and whites. Outliers such as the firing of 93 high school teachers by the Central Falls, R.I., school district cover up the reality [...]
Editor of Dropout Nation and Co-Author of "A Byte At the Apple: Rethhinking Education Data in the Post-NCLB Era". Conttributor to The American Spectator and Labor Watch. Author of "Left Behind: A Star Editorial Board series" and longtime editorialist on education and economic affairs.
On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, I look at the efforts by the Obama administration to bring districts into Race to the Top and offer some steps that could make the reform work even more effective. This includes turning school districts pioneering school reform efforts into enterprise zones of sorts, freeing them from restrictive state [...] […]
On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, I comb through school desegregation efforts in this past century to show how school reformers can foster new leaders from the most-unlikely of men and women. For school reformers inside the Beltway and elsewhere, fostering these “impromptu leaders” from outside education through use of technology and by getting together […]
This week’s Dropout Nation Podcast focuses on California’s parent trigger school reform law (along with Connecticut’s efforts to pass a similar measure) and why the arguments against it from such skeptics such as Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews and Diane Ravitch don’t stand up to scrutiny. You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio [...] […]
miriam freedman: When I taught in the junior high school in Berkeley in the late 1960's, we had tracking. You can imagine who was in the upper track and in the lower, ...
PhillipMarlowe: The apparent goal of the bill is to "end the practice of 'socially promoting' third-graders who cannot read adequately enough for the fourth grade,...
PhillipMarlowe: Indiana Gov lacks smarts when it comes to education:
http://www.tribstar.com/opinion_columns/local_story_362174854.html
I was brought ...
PhillipMarlowe: More Jason Kamras and his Arne Duncan-like success in DCPS:
http://gfbrandenburg.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/what-is-the-value-of-having-a-superstar-tea...
Lightkeeper: "jason Kamras may be the most-important person in education today." Cut the crap. Who wrote this baloney? Jason is one of Rhee's foot soldiers. What ...
RiShawn Biddle/Dropout Nation on Twitter