The science behind rigor

In Los Angeles, where I teach seventh-grade math, our current teacher evaluation system is undeniably broken. Initially designed to be a robust observation protocol and rubric, our system has degenerated into a 10-minute checklist. A well-intentioned but often overspent administrator comes into my room, fills out the requisite paperwork and signs on the dotted line. [...]

In America’s push for education reform, the college completion problem is now under the microscope. The Obama Administration’s goal, for instance, is to have 60 percent of young people (aged 25-34) across the country with some postsecondary credential by 2020. But experts say this can’t be reached until another problem is solved; 1.2 million students [...]

In 2009, the federal government made an unprecedented investment in the country’s lowest-performing schools when it sent them $3.5 billion with an order: turn things around. Sufficient time has now passed for researchers and policymakers to begin examining how well the School Improvement Grant program (SIG) is working. So far, the evidence has been largely [...]

Will Ben Austin grow weary of organizing? The 43-year-old lawyer, education reformer, community organizer and father of two has taken on a huge job, mobilizing parents in Los Angeles to help them transform consistently failing schools that he believes are not serving children. In the last three years, as the director of Parent Revolution, Austin [...]

Chicago will give $2 million to companies that hire City Colleges graduates, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. “You hire one of our community college kids, we’ll pay their stipend for the first four weeks of work,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a commencement speech for the system’s graduates. “I want the rest of the country and [...]

If college is an investment, students should have some idea what they’ll earn with a degree in nursing or marketing or whatever from College X vs. College Y, writes Daniel de Vise in College, Inc. Soon more information will be available about post-college employment. Especially as college continues to get more expensive, students rightfully want to [...]

Getting your middle-schooler in front of a high-quality teacher for even one year will improve his or her chances of going to college and earning a good salary later in life, according to a recent study. The study’s authors used value-added modeling—predicting how well a given student will do on a standardized test, controlling for [...]

For 10 months, Carolyn Abbott waited for the other shoe to drop. In April 2011, Abbott, who teaches mathematics to seventh- and eighth-graders at the Anderson School, a citywide gifted-and-talented school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, received some startling news. Her score on the Teacher Data Report, the New York City Department of [...]

Students will be able to earn college credit for free online courses thanks to a partnership between the Saylor Foundation, which offers  free, self-paced college courses, and StraighterLine, which offers low-cost online courses. Saylor students will be able to take a StraighterLine exam to earn credit backed by the American Council on Education, reports the Chronicle of Higher [...]

Community colleges in Texas will adopt a radical redesign of developmental math, reports Inside Higher Ed. The Carnegie Foundation and the Dana Center at the University of Texas have developed Mathways, a new approach to helping community college students get up to speed in the math skills they’ll need to complete a credential. . . . remedial students [...]