Despite 25 years of reform, U.S. schools still fall short: Now, despite the push toward standards-based reform that culminated in No Child Left Behind, the United States has made relatively small strides in student achievement. And it has fallen further behind other industrialized nations. Without major changes, including better teacher training and compensation, the US risks not only stagnating achievement but also serious harm to the economy, reformers say. [CSM]
Informal Style of Electronic Messages Is Showing Up in Schoolwork, Study Finds: As e-mail messages, text messages and social network postings become nearly ubiquitous in the lives of teenagers, the informality of electronic communications is seeping into their schoolwork, a new study says. Nearly two-thirds of 700 students surveyed said their e-communication style sometimes bled into school assignments. [NYT]
Understanding How Educational Freedom Improves Education: The human resources director of a large urban district, who had previously been a great principal, once explained to me that his job largely consisted of dealing with teachers who came to work drunk. In a district with 30,000 teachers, about one came to work drunk every day. And then there are the infamous “Rubber Rooms” where NYC places its hundreds of incompetent teachers which it can’t fire, costing the district tens of millions per year. [Cato]
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