education policy

Kill tenure. End due process. Fight the unions.

A panel of legislators and education leaders at the 2011 National Summit on Education Reform advised tough love for making school change.

But education policy analyst Bryan Hassell said that it’s not enough to just make it harder for bad teachers to continue in the profession.

“There are 3.2 million teachers in the country,” Hassell said. “There is no profession where we fill up the entire profession with excellent employees.”

Clearly suffering withdrawals from his suddenly silent Blackberry smart phone, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush told an audience of hundreds of educators, education service providers and policy makers that he was considering a change.

  If Blackberry doesn’t get his act together soon, Bush lamented, “I’m going to the iPhone, I guess… join all those folks who have learned how to do this in a much harder format.”

 The line drew a hearty laugh from the crowd at the 2011 National Summit on Education Reform in San Francisco, but it exemplified the Foundation for Excellence in Education chairman’s stone-serious message: If something isn’t working, changes must be made — and quickly.

  In his address, Bush called for more rigorous academic standards, guided by a common core set of standards focused on the most important academic competencies.

  If you sing, sing with your kids.

  If you dance, dance with your kids. 

  And sure, it’s important to know how to align curriculum, scaffold objectives and create anticipatory sets.

  But that’s not what makes a good teacher.

  If you don’t have a student of your own attending a public school right now, chances are good that you’re not very impressed with the state of education in America. Fewer than one in five Americans who aren’t directly connected to a school rate the school system favorably.

In yet another indication that North Carolina is becoming a key front in the battle to end the dropout epidemic, the Tar Heel State's own U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan is co-sponsoring a bill that would fund high school dropout prevention programs.

A new national report from Education Week and the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center finds that the nation’s graduation rate has increased significantly, following two consecutive years of declines and stagnation.

With the dramatic turnaround, the nation’s graduation rate stands at 72 percent — the highest level of high school completion in more than two decades, according to the report. 

You’ve probably heard the old line about the Air Force having to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber, right?

Well Ithaca Public Schools Superintendent Nathan Bootz has added a new twist to that old thinking exercise.

In an op-ed published in Central Michigan’s Morning Sun, Bootz asks why the state of Michigan can afford to spend so much on its prisoners when it spends so little on its students.

Want to serve at-risk students in Texas?

Under Texas Education Agency accountability standards, you'll have to maintain a dropout rate no higher than 20 percent, based on the number of students enrolled in one year who make it through to the next.

We’re all for accountability, but it's time to get real.