The letter below was sent to the New Jersey Star Ledger on Friday, March, 19th, 2010 at 5:42 P.M. They have not published it, and I am assuming at this point that they won’t. Even though it is framed to specifically discuss New Jersey, the topic and my points in this article can be attributed [...]

I’m starting to believe that there is no such thing as “large-scale” education reform unless the government steps in and mandates it. Quite frankly, I don’t think large scale reform should exist anyway (especially by bureaucrats). Right now, the educational world has thousands of people who all have the answers to the question of what [...]

Recently Diane Ravitch, former United States Assistant Secretary for Education under the Bush administration, has come under fire for an “about face” of her standpoint on NCLB. The whole situation is a shame for a number of reasons and yet no one is willing to look them in the face. I applaud her for finally [...]

I support standardized testing and so do you even if you don’t know it or want to admit it. What you don’t support is standardized testing in its current form or for that use that has become synonymous with the term. Imagine if standardized testing was not mentioned in the same sentence as the “No [...]

Considering the amount of frustration that parents, educators, and political pundits throw at our system of schooling, one can only wonder why there is minimal support for a complete overhaul of the structure. The reality is that the only way our educational system will experience a complete alteration is through a paradigm shift that looks [...]

This is the first in a series of posts over how to judge teacher effectiveness using input and output data. In this first post, I discuss the conversation that education circles should be having over how to properly utilize quantitative data to assess teachers. Much of the discussion in education circles today revolves around performance pay and [...]

An article in the Washington Post today (January 6th) discusses an announcement to be made by the Obama administration to provide $250 million dollars in aid to improve STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics) instruction and “help the nation compete in key fields with economic rivals”. This is an outstanding effort by the Obama administration to empower teachers with [...]

An article published on January 1st in the Seattle Times paints a dismal picture of the priority that education seems to be experiencing during the economic “situation” of our country. Take note of the different components that are being cut or downsized to save money especially, “suspending all-day Kindergarten for students in schools with the [...]