A New Take on Teaching (video)
April 22, 2010 — World Business: These days the word entrepreneur usually conjures up images of tech start ups and small businesses. However in the USA, a new type of entrepreneur has arisen over the past decade whose goal is to transform an ailing education system.
Duncan’s Call for School Turnarounds Sparks Debate
The U.S. secretary of education’s call to “turn around” the nation’s 5,000 worst-performing schools has found a warm welcome among educators and policymakers who see that focus as long overdue. But it has also sparked debate about how—and whether—such an enormous leadership and management challenge can be accomplished.
Opinion: Innovation will drive new federal funding for education
The passage of the stimulus bill last week instantly doubled the federal role in funding schools, with an unprecedented influx of $95 billion. The question is, in education, what will that money buy?
Most of the answer is jobs: fewer pink slips for teachers, and dirt finally moving on long-stalled construction projects. Yet in a welcome and farsighted move, the Recovery Act not only shores up the system, it also invests in fixing it where it’s broken.
Obama puts spotlight on education deficit
WASHINGTON— President Obama on Tuesday laid out a series of challenges for the nation to meet in job training and college attainment, part of an effort to give every child a “complete and competitive education.” The president, in his first address to a joint session of Congress, said his administration would provide the support needed to give the U.S. the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. He said there was a vital need for Americans to complete more years of education if the nation is to compete globally.
Rolling Up Their Sleeves
CHICAGO—Chicago has become a hotbed of “venture philanthropy” in education, as two local foundations contribute not only money, but also the hands-on work of some of the city’s wealthiest and most influential residents, to help improve the schools in the nation’s third-largest district.
Opinion: Depression taught us that education is key to recovery
Imagine this situation: The economy is facing a crisis with no recent parallel. Many Americans have lost jobs and homes. Yet even as the president takes dramatic measures to jump-start the economy, he lays the groundwork for recovery with measures to improve education and widen college opportunities, especially for low-income and minority youngsters.
Opinion: Federal Education Innovation – Getting It Right
When the Bush administration set out six years ago to create an office of education innovation, it did not envision spending millions of dollars on a museum dedicated to highlighting the importance of New Bedford, Mass., in the 19th-century whaling industry.
Brain drain: Why so many talented educators are leaving for New York
BOSTON—THE GREATEST SIN that any Red Sox owner can commit is to allow a star player to move to New York. From Babe Ruth to Johnny Damon, these defections are greeted with howls of outrage from the fans and columnists of Red Sox Nation.
Beyond ‘No Child’
How to improve under-achieving schools in America’s poorest communities has vexed policy makers for generations. President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law insists on accountability. But critics charge it encourages teaching to the test at the expense of real learning.
The law still sparks a loud argument – but as one of our guests today writes in the current issue of Harper’s magazine, there’s debate that test-prep companies such as Kaplan are profiting handsomely from the federal mandate to test, and test, and test again.
Opinion: Better education through innovation
America’s educational system is falling behind. We must find innovative leaders with a vision who can prepare children for the future they deserve.
In the summer of 1918, as tuberculosis, bubonic plague and a flu pandemic threatened America’s newly crowded cities, the chemist Charles Holmes Herty took a walk through New York City with his colleague J.R. Bailey. Herty posed a question: Suppose Bailey discovered an exceptionally powerful medicine. What institution would allow him to take his breakthrough from lab experiment to widespread cure?
Bailey replied, “I don’t know.”