Bill Gates to billionaires: Donate, donate, donate!
Bill and Melinda Gates, together with Warren Buffet, were on the Charlie Rose show last night to make a big annoucement: they’ve asked America’s billionaires to make a moral commitment to donate half or more of their fortunes to charity. Fortune has estimated that up to $600 billion could be at stake if the 400 wealthiest […]
Recess round-up: June 17
Special education: Iowa and Kansas have been granted federal waivers to cut back on the amount of money they spend on special education. South Carolina is waiting to find out the results of its waiver request, and one expert thinks more requests may be on the way. (Ed Week) Gambling: Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker […]
Are for-profit schools breathing sigh of relief? Or in holding pattern?
Fast-growing for-profit schools have some more time to worry about new rules that have the potential to drastically alter — and possibly curtail — their future. Enrollment in for-profit schools has soared in recent years. The consulting firm Eduventures predicted a 25 percent jump in the number of students expected to be educated at for-profit schools by 2019. […]
Recess round-up: June 16
HechingerEd presents its newest feature: the Recess Round-Up. We’ll give you a daily dose of what stories are making education-news headlines around the nation. The round-up will be posted every day around noon – just in time for a little mid-day break! Class size: Classes in Chicago may balloon to 35 students this fall, as the city struggles to […]
Earn an online degree at iCollege
Minnesota’s two-term governor Tim Pawlenty challenged the status quo of higher education when he appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Thursday night. He talked about the role of government and how we educate our students at the post-secondary level, but the overall message was about efficiency. “Do you really think in 20 years […]
Want a career? Go to college, says new report
The Obama administration’s education reform slogan for public-school students might seem a little open-ended to some – what does it really mean for kids to be college- and career-ready, after all? The findings from a report released today by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce suggest that perhaps the president’s saying should […]
Teachers cheating on students’ tests? A response to today’s New York Times story
What is the real point of today’s New York Times story on cheating? Testing is bad. When test results matter, some percentage of educators (the story suggests perhaps 1% to 4%) will cheat to get them. Testing “ends up pushing more and more of them over the line,” says Robert Schaeffer, spokesperson for the anti-testing organization FairTest, […]
Are charter schools succeeding because they hold students back?
Social promotion — the practice of allowing children to move on to the next grade level with their age-group, even if they’ve performed poorly — is one of those contentious issues in education that, depending on whom you ask, you can get an earful about why it’s either critical to long-term student success or destroying public education. Over […]
State standards: all over the map
If you live in New Hampshire, Utah or Vermont, you could theoretically graduate from high school without ever being taught how to tell time to the minute, what an adverb is (or how to use one), and who the current U.S. president is. In fact, 15 states have no standard about students learning to tell […]
Race to the Top dropouts
Many states, like Minnesota and Indiana, said they didn’t have enough of a consensus to submit a cohesive application. Others claimed it was too much work for too little gain.
