- How do teachers impact students’ lifetime earnings? Eric Hanushek has quantified the answer to this and other questions related to teacher quality in his recent Education Next article.
- Is high-stakes testing hurting our kids? Byong Man Ahn, former Minister of Education for exam-intensive South Korea, thinks so, according to this recent Education Week article. Gregory Michie takes a similar tone in his Huffington Post op-ed, as he explores the overuse of the word “innovation” in education. Unfortunately he misses a key point – improving test scores for “impoverished kids” and fostering creativity are not mutually exclusive.
- Education Week’s Schwartz, Levin, and Gamoran continue their Future of Education Reform series. Part two (of seven) provides education reform recommendations based on successful policies from countries that are out-performing the United States on international tests.
- The latest research on school funding inequalities comes courtesy of the Center for American Progress’s Saba Bireda, whose latest report, Funding Education Equitably, addresses problems with the ESEA’s Title I “comparability provision.” Bireda identifies loopholes in this provision that result in the rich getting richer (and vice versa), then proposes some solutions to the inequities she finds.
- Tennessee students can fear no more thanks to the “anti-bullying” legislation passed in the House this week. Teachers may now protect their students from “intellectual bullies” who apparently took over education decades ago by including theories on global warming and evolution in school curriculums. Andy Sher covers the story in the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
