As No Child Left Behind becomes an ever bigger disaster, Secretary Duncan faces a major dilemma. How can he continue to enforce this law he has declared a train wreck? Last spring, in an attempt to goad Congress into accepting his formula for revising No Child Left Behind, Education Secretary Arne...
When something keeps on appearing as a byproduct of an activity, eventually you might begin to wonder if perhaps the byproduct is actually the objective. The one result that education reform efforts seem to have in common is turmoil in our schools, especially those where there is high poverty. Let...
Follow me on Twitter: @anthonycody Today the Los Angeles Times, the largest circulation newspaper in the largest metropolis in the most populous state in the nation, came out in support of the decision by Governor Jerry Brown and Superintendent Tom Torlakson to ignore the Department of Education's ...
The trajectory of our nation's schools from the train wreck of No Child Left Behind to a new and fresh set of calamitous policies has been checked by the ways in which these so-called reforms are playing out across the country. First, what is happening with student achievement? The latest results ...
A slightly abbreviated version of this post ran as an op-ed column in yesterday's Sacramento Bee. No Child Left Behind has put the schools of California in a vise. Next year, the vast majority of our schools will be declared "failing" based on our inability to make every child in the state profici...
Guest post by John Thompson. In 2009, I assumed that President Obama appointed Arne Duncan to split the differences between data-driven and traditional reformers. I sure hoped the President did not think that a non-educator who became the CEO of Chicago schools at the age of 37 would have had the ...
In his September 28 reflection on Education Nation, John Merrow has provided us with a distillation of the solution being offered to improve learning in our low-achieving schools. Copy KIPP. For those who have not reviewed the methods at KIPP, Merrow describes them for us. KIPP kindergarten teac...
The New York Times today reported that many environmentalists are expressing frustration at recent policy decisions by the Obama administration. The story carries some strong echoes of the way educators have felt for the past two years, as Secretary Duncan has extended and intensified the worst aspe...
Gates Foundation, TFA, Teach For America
George Orwell might well be proud to see how Arne Duncan has risen to the challenge of using language to disguise government actions. Watching the Twitter Town Hall yesterday was an exercise in frustration. Unfortunately, the Department of Education has released only tweets that digest his responses...
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