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Reading Test Dummies
on Mar 26, 2009 by E.D. HIrsch (New York Times)
IN his recent education speech, President Obama asked the states to raise their standards and develop "assessments that don't simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test." With the No Child Left Behind law up for reauthorization this year, the onus is now on lawmakers and educators to find a way to maintain accountability while mitigating the current tendency to reduce schooling to a joyless grind of practice exams and empty instruction in "reading strategies."
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Categories: Education News OP-ED
The Education Wars
on Mar 23, 2009 by Dana Goldstein
Like any successful negotiator, Randi Weingarten can sense when the time for compromise is nigh. On Nov. 17, after the Election Day dust had cleared, Weingarten, the president of both the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and its New York City affiliate, the United Federation of Teachers, gave a major speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. In attendance were a host of education-policy luminaries, including Weingarten's sometimes-foe Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City, Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern, National Education Association (NEA) President Dennis van Roekel, and Rep. George Miller of California.
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Categories: Education News EEP News
Education’s Ground Zero
on Mar 23, 2009 by NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The most unlikely figure in the struggle to reform America's education system right now is Michelle Rhee.
She's a Korean-American chancellor of schools in a city that is mostly African-American. She's an insurgent from the school-reform movement who spent her career on the outside of the system, her nose pressed against the glass - and now she's in charge of some of America's most blighted schools. Less than two years into the job, she has transformed Washington into ground zero of America's education reform movement.
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Categories: Education News
Making the Grade
on Mar 18, 2009 by Andrew J. Rotherham and Richard Whitmire
Randi Weingarten, the notoriously feisty president of the second-largest national teachers' union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), received a hero's welcome at the National Press Club last November. In her speech, she vowed to give ear to almost any tough-minded school reform, and, in a line that thrilled many reformers, promised that the AFT will not protect incompetent teachers: "Teachers are the first to say, 'Let's get incompetent teachers out of the classroom.'"
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Categories: Education News OP-ED
Teacher Rx: The Perfect Storm For Reform
on Mar 13, 2009 by Reverend Sharpton and Chancellor Klein (Huffington Post)
No reform is more critical to closing the nation's shameful achievement gap than boosting the quality of teachers in high-poverty schools. As President Obama has suggested, a new generation of gifted teachers in inner-city schools could prove to be the unsung heroes of education reform.
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Categories: Education News EEP News OP-ED
Cautious support for merit pay among LI teachers
on Mar 11, 2009 by JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER
Hempstead school administrators met yesterday morning and discussed how to improve educational standards and expectations in an effort to turn the district around. A few hours later, the district's interim superintendent watched from his office as President Barack Obama gave a speech outlining many of the same ideals.
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Categories: Education News
SENATE KILLS DC SCHOOL VOUCHERS
on Mar 11, 2009 by DAPHNE RETTER
The Senate effectively dealt a death blow to a federally funded
District of Columbia voucher program that helps send poor and mostly
minority DC kids to private schools.
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Categories: Education News
Obama backs merit pay for teachers, charter schools
on Mar 11, 2009 by Associated Press
President Barack Obama embraced merit pay for teachers yesterday in
spelling out a vision of education that will almost certainly alienate
union backers.
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Categories: Education News
O MAKES PITCH FOR TEACHER MERIT PAY
on Mar 11, 2009 by CHARLES HURT
Breaking with Democratic dogma and the teacher unions that supported
him, President Obama yesterday strongly endorsed paying educators based
on their performance in the classroom as part of his vision for
overhauling the nation's education system.
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Categories: Education News
President Obama education plan calls for performance-based pay, firing poorly performing teachers
on Mar 11, 2009 by Kenneth R. Bazinet
For President Obama, it was another day, another major initiative -
this time calling for an overhaul of America's educational system.
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Categories: Education News
