Sparking the evolution of education choice
Commentary and opinion
The performance of American 15-year-olds in reading and math has remained stagnant for the past two decades according to results released this past week from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Meanwhile, the achievement gap in reading between high- and low-performing students has grown wider. The less-than-stellar results from[Read More…]
Trips to the cineplex are important holiday rituals in the Ladner clan, and Midway was on the viewing list this year. I enjoyed it. Looper issued a video with several scenes you might suspect were Hollywood embellishments. But nope, they actually happened. See more here and here. The Battle of[Read More…]
In what Newsday refers to as one of the most concentrated investigations of discrimination by real estate agents in the half-century since enactment of America’s landmark fair housing law, its reporters have found evidence of widespread separate and unequal treatment of minority potential homebuyers and minority communities on Long Island.[Read More…]
A recent comparison of K-12 children around the U.S. brought bad news for education reformers—an amorphous group of policymakers and advocates who are akin to locksmiths searching for the right combination of resources and policy ideas to unlock student potential. The news was bad for students, too, but since the[Read More…]
When I was a teacher union president in the early 1990s, I gave an interview with our local newspaper in which I criticized the educational inequalities that were being exacerbated by public magnet schools. Many found my criticisms hypocritical because I was an education choice advocate who had helped launch[Read More…]
Editor’s note: This commentary, first published Nov. 11 on Education Post, reminds us that the best way to prepare students for a rapidly changing world is to empower educators to create more diverse learning options and to enable all parents to access those learning options that best meet their children’s[Read More…]
Measuring a child’s mastery of material taught in school is plainly reasonable, often necessary. To a point the same may be said of the ceaseless effort of statisticians either to equate or distinguish groups of children by scores on standardized tests. Today a throng of experts, pro and con to[Read More…]
“If you care about children, parents, and communities, you can’t vote for Bernie Sanders. He’s the teachers’ union candidate.” This is the message educational opportunity activist (and CEO of Education Post) Chris Stewart posted on Twitter over the weekend. Too many parrot this type of argument, and it’s hurting our[Read More…]
