Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 at 9:30 am
Anytime you hear government officials mandating new behaviors to a broad swath of the population, that mandate is likely to run afoul of the First Amendment. And so it is with President Obama’s announcement last night that all states must “require that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn 18.”
Although Mr. Obama made other pronouncements about education — see Dana Goldstein’s good summary analysis in The Nation — the stay-in-school mandate was the one that caught my ear, since enforcing it would run afoul of both the United States Supreme Court and our historic commitment to religious liberty.
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Wednesday, December 7th, 2011 at 2:07 pm
In the halls of Congress and on the presidential campaign trail, a debate is raging over which set of economic proposals to pursue in order to rebuild the national economy. At the same time, K-12 education reformers are engaged in their own frantic search for the right recipe(s) that can unlock the full power of teaching and learning. But rarely do we acknowledge that one individual stands, improbably, at the center of both debates – John Maynard Keynes.
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Categories:
Assessment,
Equity,
Learning,
Organizational ChangeTags: charter schools, DC, DCPS, driving demand, economics, education reform, freedom, Great Schools, John Maynard Keynes, K-12, Learning, parents, school choice
Monday, May 16th, 2011 at 12:09 pm
Should your zip code determine your access to the American dream? Or is the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee to provide “equal protection” a principle we have silently agreed to uphold in theory – but not in practice?
I’m starting to wonder after reading about Tanya McDowell, the Connecticut mother facing felony charges for lying on her five-year-old son’s registration forms so he could attend a better school. McDowell’s story is painfully reminiscent of Kelley Williams-Bolar, the Ohio mother who made a similar choice earlier this year – and is now a convicted felon.
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Categories:
Democracy,
Equity,
LearningTags: Brown v. Board of Education, CNN, Equity, fairness, Justice, Learning, Rodriguez, thurgood marshall, us supreme court
Monday, May 9th, 2011 at 12:33 pm
For many of us, the Internet still holds the promise of becoming the Great Equalizer, the Great Connector, and the Great Amplifier for the modern era. From its utility as a resource for citizens protesting a corrupt governmental regime, to its capacity to connect people who would otherwise never have an opportunity to meet, the [...]
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Thursday, September 30th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
I’m playing catch up with all the programming NBC is producing this week as part of its Education Nation series, but I want to highly recommend one of those videos, an interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell and Finland’s Minister of Education, Pasi Sahlberg.
See for yourself on the video below, but here are a few highlights worth underscoring:
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Monday, August 23rd, 2010 at 12:43 pm
There’s a revolution underway in the scientific community, and it’s changing the way we understand both the structure and the inner workings of the universe. These insights have far-reaching implications for all of us – and none of them are being heeded by the leading voices of our current efforts of transform America’s antediluvian public education system.
This is a serious problem. Here are three examples of what I mean:
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Categories:
Assessment,
Equity,
Learning,
Organizational Change,
Teacher QualityTags: albert einstein, assessments, culture, ecology, isaac newton, Learning, motivation, quantum mechanics, science, standardized tests
Wednesday, August 11th, 2010 at 10:26 am
It’s almost election season in DC, which means I need to decide once and for all if Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee – and, by extension, Mayor Adrian Fenty – deserve another four years at the helm.
Here are the arguments as I see them:
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Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
During a week in which both Education Secretary Arne Duncan and President Barack Obama will publicly defend their education reform priorities – in response to severe criticism from the country’s leading civil rights organizations – I’m trying to figure out how a set of ideas that was so close to mobilizing a quiet revolution in public education has instead led the soldiers of that revolution to passionately (and loudly) take up arms against each other.
All I can come up with is they’ve gotten some lousy advice. And I think I see where they’ve gone wrong.
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Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 at 9:31 am
In case you missed it, there’s an important new piece in Newsweek about the declining capacity of Americans to think creatively — and what we can do about it. This is, of course, the primary issue that has driven Sir Ken Robinson’s work (if you’re among the few who haven’t yet seen his hilarious and [...]
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Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
I just saw “The Lottery” – a documentary film about public education in general, and the charter school movement in particular – and I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. The film is beautiful, and deeply moving, It is impossible not to fall in love with the four children (and their families) whose [...]
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