EducationNews Commentaries and Reports

In Defense of Testing Series
Educational Horizons book reviews:
Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us
The Trouble with Black Boys: And Other Reflections on Race,Equity, and the Future of Public Education

An Interview with Sissel Mc Carthy: Are these “journalists” behaving badly or unethically?
Michael F. Shaughnessy
Senior Columnist EducationNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University
One of the goals of education is to teach students to look for facts, data, evidence, knowledge, and to examine information objectively. How do YOU teach your students to do this? We try to instill in our students the importance of critical thinking as well as thorough reporting. We highlight the importance of confirming everything and looking at a potential source’s motivation.

Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair
by Ron Isaac
Columnist EducationNews.org
The story is relatively fresh but reading it leaves a bitter aftertaste and foul whiff that is vintage Chancellor Klein. The New York Times on October 22 reported that a librarian at Brooklyn Tech High School, a veteran of 39 years as an educator, was fined $500 by the city’s Conflict of Interests Board because he had violated the city’s ethics code.

Interview with Mrs. Casey Owens: Good Beginnings Program
Jimmy Kilpatrick, Editor
EducationNews.org

The professional development on early childhood from this grant has taught me so much! Research consistently supports "reflection" as critical for effective  teaching and growth as a teacher. How has this project assisted you in gaining new knowledge and skills?

Importing Foreign Teachers Masks Deeper Problem
By M. J. Maddox, Ph.D.
Guest Columnist EducationNews.org
One of many myths that continue to obscure educational issues is the one that connects the exodus of teachers from the classroom with low salaries.

Paul LeRoy Bustill Robeson: “Here, for the first time in my life ... I walk in full human dignity.”
The Soviet Union, Stalin, and communism
After traveling to Europe for several years in the early 1930s, Robeson was extended and accepted an offer to visit the Soviet Union. While there, Robeson was given the red carpet treatment, according to biographer Martin Duberman, including trips to the theatre, banquets, and other attractions. Robeson became captivated with this new society and its leadership, declaring "that the country was entirely free of racial prejudice and that Afro-American spiritual music resonated to Russian folk traditions. “Here, for the first time in my life ... I walk in full human dignity.” Paul Robeson: Scandalize My Name

An Interview with Diana Sheets: Education, History, and Politics
Michael F. Shaughnessy
Senior Columnist EducationNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University
In your most recent posting, you discuss Sarah Palin's choice as a Vice Presidential Candidate. How is she different than Geraldine Ferraro? Geraldine Ferraro is a lawyer by training. Born in 1935, she came of age politically when women had to fight to join the nearly exclusive "male club" of politics. In running for office for the 9th Congressional District in Queens, her campaign slogan was "Finally, A Tough Democrat." Women in her generation had to be more "manly" than their male counterparts.

Commentary: Education and the Candidates
Michael F. Shaughnessy
Senior Columnist EducationNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University
In case anyone out there is interested, the link below will provide an overview of what the two presidential candidates have to say about education and No Child Left Behind.

No campaign education advisor left behind
By Mike Petrilli
If many recent polls are to be believed, Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. And this week we got an important glimpse into the dynamics of his education team that might preview what we can expect in the four years to come.

Remarks By Governor Sarah Palin On The McCain-Palin Commitment To Children With Special Needs
ARLINGTON, VA -- Governor Sarah Palin today delivered the following remarks as prepared for delivery in Pittsburgh, PA, at 9:00 a.m. ET:
Thank you all very much. I appreciate the hospitality of the people of Pittsburgh, and I'm grateful to all the groups who have joined us here today. The Woodlands Foundation, the Down Syndrome Center at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, Autism-link, the Children's Institute of Pittsburgh: Thank you for coming today. And, above all, thank you for the great work you do for the light and love you bring into so many lives.

Public Accountability Missing in Education
By Laurie H. Rogers, author of "Betrayed"
Columnist EducationNews.org
My philosophy toward authority generally centers around one word: Accountability. In my view, there are two main kinds of accountability: small “a” accountability and capital “A” accountability. In public education, there is a great deal of one and almost none of the other.

Teacher Unions and School Reform
David W. Kirkpatick
Columnist EducationNews.org
When it comes to reforming the schools, the major obstacle for decades has been, and will continue to be, the opposition of the two major teacher unions - the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

PARALLEL UNIVERSE
Will Fitzhugh, The Concord Review
Columnist EducationNews.org
Progressive educators often argue that a focus on standards, testing and accountability prevents teachers from exercising their creativity and imagination on the job. As an experiment in imagination, I offer the following suggested parallel universe.

DO MAGNET SCHOOLS OUTPERFORM TRADITIONAL PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND REDUCE THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP?
By Robert Bifulco, Casey Cobb and Courtney Bell
In response to a landmark civil rights ruling, the state of Connecticut has adopted models of choice-based interdistrict desegregation that appear to satisfy current legal constraints. In this paper, we focus on Connecticut’s interdistrict magnet schools, and estimate the effects these schools have had on student achievement.

Education, responsibility, and values in the black community
Commonwealth Magazine

By Michael Jonas
Bill Cosby and his fellow author, Harvard child psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint, sit down with executive editor Michael Jonas to talk about the need for black families to take more responsibility for the upbringing and education of their children

MEET THE WORLD BANK COLLABORATORS PROMOTING ALL-DAY KINDERGARTEN FOR AGES 3-5
Kids First Parent Association of Canada
"Towards a Roadmap for Preschool Children in British Columbia"
* Parents have been shut out of the secretive planning process.
* HELP and the CCED are closely tied to the corporate sector, "collaborating" with the World Bank

Anatomy of an Evil Agenda - Teaching for social justice, a la William Ayers, is intended to subvert more than educate.
Pope Center for Higher Education
By Jay Schalin
William Ayers has received considerable attention recently, due to his association with presidential candidate Barack Obama. Ayers’ past as a member of the violent radical Weatherman faction in the 1960s is well-known. He does not repudiate his bomb-building escapades in the 1960s—he continues to refer to himself as “a radical, Leftist, small ‘c’ communist,” (as he did in 1995).

A Tale of Two Gaps: Achievement and Home Ownership, or How Political Correctness is Unraveling America
Tom Shuford
Columnist EducationNews.org
“A lot of the politicians are doing the three-monkey thing—hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil—because they’re so afraid of political correctness. (Jim Pendergraph, former Sheriff, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina) A lot of politicians and, now we know, a lot of Wall Street CEOs are “doing the three-monkey thing.” It was their hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, and, above all, speak-no-evil attitude towards lowered lending standards — to close the white-minority “home ownership gap” — that caused the immense destruction of wealth of recent months.

Veteran Educators Say Closing Public Schools Is In The Best Interest of Both Children & Nation
Book Reviews on EducationNews.org
The book, 'Leaving School: Finding Education' comprehensively explains how American schools have failed to make the transition to the new technological age of the 21st Century. As America enters this new millennium, parents, educators and even politicians are seeking a way out of the fiscal burdens and performance failures that characterize America's schools.

Additional Commentaries and Reports