Today’s op-ed piece by David Brooks in the NY Times uses two studies to explain the widening gap between the haves and have nots. The first study is titled “The Race Between Education and Technology” and was written by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz. In a nutshell they detail how America’s technological advancements and ...

One of my criticisms of NCLB is that it causes too many schools to focus all of their attention on the bottom 25% of a school’s population while ignoring the middle- and upper-level students. Some of the effects of this focus in my school are: fewer upper-level course choices in order to create more lower-level courses, larger [...]

I often comment that educational solutions cannot solely be a responsibility of the schools. Communities must take the reigns and help solve many of the dilemmas facing education, and the ETS seems to agree with me that poverty may be the largest obstacle to overcome when creating academic success. Here are some of the highlights from [...]

A while back I had a student, Davy, reach the final week of his final semester in high school, and he had a 40% in my senior Mythology course while maintaining an attendance rate of 60% (and I think a blood-alcohol level of 2.0 most of the semester). I wouldn’t budge on giving “extra credit” [...]

Texas has had its share of headaches when it comes to testing.  Does anyone else remember the TECAT?  That was a test that every Texas teacher had to take to keep on trucking.  It was an absurd, expensive ordeal where teachers were treated like cattle because lawmakers weren't sure that they were educated enough ...

In an effort to help teachers facing problems with low performing students, the state of Rhode Island has placed step by step lesson plans on a Web site available to teachers and everyone else.   The article on boston.com also explains that using the plans is voluntary. The materials include more than 70 lesson plans, ...

Everyone wants to blame teachers for low test scores.  After all, teachers are the easiest targets.  I have to wonder how much money is being spent on all of the research studies about improving teacher quality.  What about the time and effort spent on discussions about the No Child Left Behind Law?  Are ...

Parents are scrambling to get their kids tested for the gifted-and-talented programs due to a new admissions process in New York City.  Confusion seemed to be the name of the game in an article on nytimes.com as parents sought testing times and locations. A new admissions process for highly coveted gifted-and-talented ...