Here's a different take on the French president's proposal to ban homework.
Who Gates is funding — the latest education grants
What has captured the interest of the powerful Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in education these days? MOOCs, for one thing. Here are the education-related grants the foundation awarded in November, at least according to the website.
Fiscal cliff: Schools would be affected inequitably
Budget cuts that would occur if the country goes over the "fiscal cliff" in January would be devastating to schools and students but they would not be shared equally. New data shows that sequestration would disproportionately impact disadvantaged youth.
Moco schools chief calls for three-year moratorium on standardized testing
Montgomery County Superintendent Joshua Starr, solidifying his role as a prominent critic of President Obama's education policies, says the country needs a three-year moratorium on standardized testing and needs to "stop the insanity" of evaluating teachers according to student test scores because it is based on "bad science."
Big questions about proposed Loudoun charter school
The Loudoun County School Board is close to deciding whether to approve its (and possibly Northern Virginia's) first charter school, a proposed math-science academy that critics allege has ties to an Turkish Islamic preacher and a network of like-minded charters across the United States. But, it turns out, questions about ties to the influential preacher, Fethullah Gulen, are not the most immediate issue facing the board with this application.
New Jersey charter schools: What’s real and not real
A new report on charter schools in New Jersey was hailed as proof that charters in the state on average produce better standardized test scores than the traditional public schools. Which would be fine, if that's what the report really said.
Michelle Rhee wins over a critic
In October, a former teacher and education activist named Greg Harris was tapped as director of StudentsFirst Ohio, part of former D.C. public schools chancellor Michelle Rhee's national anti-union education advocacy organization. But not long before that, he had been decidedly anti-Rhee, publicly attacking her involvement in Ohio school reform. "If students truly did come first, then why is Rhee using her celebrity to coddle the very governors who are ransacking education funding?," he asked in a scathing blogpost in 2011.
America’s next education ‘crisis’ — and who benefits
Arguably no sector of American society has been cast with the narrative of crisis as much as public education. And the fever pitch is about to go higher. Here's why and how.
How one school ‘turnaround’ worked (without firing the teachers)
Here's the story of a school turnaround that worked without using any of the Obama administration's four corporate-based options for fixing failing schools.
The December dilemma: Santa in school
What is acceptable -- and not acceptable -- in terms of bringing religion into public schools at Christmas (or any other) time?