Editor's Note: Bridging Differences resumes today. Dear Deborah, Happy New Year to you and to our readers. 2009 is shaping up to be an important year for American education. We will soon have a new Secretary of Education, a new voice in charge of the nation's bully pulpit. There will be much for u... Read Full Post >
Dear Deborah, Now we know that President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Arne Duncan as his secretary of education. This must be a relief to Linda Darling-Hammond, who heads Obama's transition team for education policy, because now the attacks on her can cease. I have been shocked by the editorial o... Read Full Post >
Dear Diane, Columnists who write about education can display amazing chutzpah. How about this headline in the Boston Globe: “How Obama can fix education”? Of course, it’s also the editors of our “finest” newspapers who are to blame for this view of education as an appliance. Or David ... Read Full Post >
Dear Deborah, We live in a dangerous and dark time for schools. In many districts, the gears of power are controlled by non-educators who don't have a clue. They madly embrace testing and data and data-driven instruction because they have not a single idea about how kids learn and how teachers tea... Read Full Post >
Editor's note: Due to a busy travel schedule, Deborah Meier composed this entry before Tuesday's presidential election. Dear Diane, I'm on the road and writing you before Election Day (even though this won't be posted until after the big day). But I can't wait until Wednesday to respond since I'll... Read Full Post >
Dear Deborah, You and I have advocated for different approaches over the years, though they are not contradictory. I have stressed the importance of content in the curriculum (history, literature, the arts, science, foreign languages, etc.), and you have stressed the importance of “habits of mind... Read Full Post >
Dear Diane, How many of our friends 10 years ago would have imagined that in 2008 you and I could almost be writing each other's columns? At least when it comes to NCLB, and quite a lot of other things—but not all! More or less amen, amen, and amen to every word you wrote on Tuesday. By the... Read Full Post >
Dear Diane, I'm always astounded when summer is over. How did it get by me so fast? Of course, in the past few years I don't get plunged back into the three-ring circus of schooling so suddenly. But, oddly, I miss that plunge. Among other reasons because it meant I had no time for worrying about pr... Read Full Post >
Dear Diane, You've caught me remembering what wasn't there. I reread A Nation at Risk, and—you are right-- it didn't claim that teachers were the enemy within. It even gave a few kudos to hard working teachers. It's interesting (to me) that I should misremember it. So how did we get from... Read Full Post >
Dear Diane, NYC’s decision—for budgetary reasons—to forego mandatory intelligence testing of 5-year-olds this fall is worth celebrating. But it’s a dangerous idea that will be back again. The earlier the testing culture starts, the more it erodes the resilience of all children, bu... Read Full Post >
