education

A report issued by the White House and the Education Department on Monday showed that the federal economic stimulus package (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) has so far created or saved 250,000 education jobs. more »

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I wrote last week about the absolutely shameful, shocking and appalling attacks from conservatives against President Obama in response to his plans to give students a back to school pep talk about the importance of education. more »

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Well the reviews are already in on Obama's big speech on "the importance of education", and they aren't pretty. The descriptions range from "brainwashing" and "indoctrination of your children" to accusations that Obama's speech shows that he is actually Mao, Hitler, Mussolini, and of course, a terrorist. more »

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The Obama administration realizes that our education system is lagging, but the recently announced ‘Race to the Top’ initiative may not be the solution. The Department of Education’s ‘Race to the Top’ puts up for grabs almost $5 billion of federal dollars to states that devise innovations and demonstrate improvements in K-12 education. This program is a good start in theory, but the fine print promotes broad, sweeping changes that are cause for concern.

First, to be eligible, states are required to link performance with testing. This is similar to the failed No Child Left Behind policy that focused too much on student assessment, and too little on broader factors and gains, when gauging school quality. For those who forgot, NCLB showed little gains in student progress, with schools forced to teach to the test and tests emphasizing low level skills.

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On July 5, 2009 U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said: “We misread how bad the economy was…”. Well that’s exactly what the previous administration did also.

Isn’t it about time we stepped back and took a fresh and comprehensive look at just what it is that is being “read”? more »

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