Oops, Rick Hess has done it again: challenged conventional wisdom and shown how fuzzy much of today’s education-reform thinking is. In his latest book, The Same Thing Over and Over: How School Reformers Get Stuck in Yesterday’s Ideas, Hess drives home the point that doing the same thing over and over with the expectation of [...]

If Americans harbored any doubts about their eroded global edge, the recent release of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development’s fourth international comparison of educational performance should rattle the nation from its “We’re No. 1’’ complacency. The latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study revealed that, although the United States made some modest [...]

Economic downturns aren’t all bad news: one upshot is that they force people to reexamine their expenditures. When money’s tight, most of us start to scrutinize where every cent is going. We reprioritize. Spending $25 for a night out at the movies, when we stop to think about it, doesn’t really make much sense – [...]

Tough talk on teacher accountability is all the rage this summer. Trouble is, we don’t know how to handle the perverse incentives that arise the moment we place undue weight on easily manipulated exams.

Today’s announcement of round two Race to the Top finalists mostly lacked drama. As is true of student performance, the best predictor of each state’s performance in round two was its performance in round one. In fact, all of the first-round finalists who didn’t win in that round found themselves in a familiar position today: they are once again finalists.

Last Friday, Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools, announced the firing of 165 teachers, based on their performance on IMPACT, the District’s spanking-new performance assessment system. IMPACT has several components, depending on a teacher’s classroom assignment. All teachers are evaluated according to a Teaching and Learning Framework, and there are other [...]

Should every student in this country be able to name the president? If so, by what age? Should every child know how to tell time to the nearest minute? By first grade, or by fifth grade? Surprisingly, only 26 states have learning standards that say students should be able to name the president. Iowa is [...]

If uninspired summer learning programs were to be the norm, then districts might be right to scrap them. But there is a new vision for summer learning that promises high returns on public investments and is taking hold in cities, among philanthropies and community-based groups, and with policymakers.

Charter schools have been around since 1992, but this is a breakthrough year. They’ve attracted fans from John Legend to Newt Gingrich; they’ve become a cornerstone of the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top initiative and they’ve even made it into pop culture

Three out of every five community college students take remedial courses, which typically cover middle school or high school material. This is evidence of the yawning gap between those who are eligible to enroll in college and those who are actually ready to attend.

This gap is inexcusable. Students should come to college ready to do college-level work.

The day we can accurately measure a teacher’s performance has finally arrived. Or so the likes of D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg would have us believe. In a speech to New York’s state legislature last November, Mayor Bloomberg praised “data-driven systems” while arguing that student test scores should [...]

Originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times on February 22, 2010
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants California to get its priorities straight. Over the last three decades, the state’s investment in universities has eroded while prison spending has shot through the roof. It’s “out of whack,” says Schwarzenegger.

Student test scores released this week on the math portion of the “nation’s report card” will make more urgent the rethinking of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. The act is up for reauthorization by Congress later this year, and test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are certain to be [...]