Here‘s what seems to me a pretty sensible approach to homework. Homework, of course. But meaningful homework.
Joanne Jacobs takes a look at Stuart Buck’s Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation. Buck’s an interesting guy who brings both credentials and experience to the issue. He’s a classical musician, lawyer (Harvard) and scholar who writes on legal as well as education issues. He’s a white dad of six, including an adopted black [...]
Well, here’s one reason for the tough employment picture for aspiring teachers. Lisa Burke of the Heritage Foundation says: The real problem within the public education sector has been more and more non-teaching staff positions. These positions continue to grow and really put a strain on state budgets. Roughly half of those people employed by [...]
The NYT reports that things aren’t looking so good for recent college-of-education grads. The recession seems to have penetrated a profession long seen as recession-proof. Superintendents, education professors and people seeking work say teachers are facing the worst job market since the Great Depression. Amid state and local budget cuts, cash-poor urban districts like New [...]
I thought this news from Canada was something posted at the Onion, but it comes by way of an Education Week blog. Some of the newly religious teachers seem to be lapsed Catholics attempting to return to the faith. But others are outright novices (so to speak): “I haven’t gone for my, um, what do [...]
I see that the New York City schools are closing their Temporary Reassignment Rooms. Nicknamed the Rubber Rooms, they were a kind of holding pens for teachers accused of misbehavior of one sort or another. Steve Brill had a fascinating piece about this in the New Yorker last year. The union is glad to have [...]
Their principals know who they are. So says Marcus Winters– citing some pretty impressive studies– over at City Journal. This is a much bigger issue, though, than just seniority rules and giving principals some say in which teachers should be laid off and which should be kept when the budget gets tight. Forty years or [...]
Is teaching a profession? A semi-profession? A sort-of profession? One of the things that usually comes up in debating this as-yet-unresolved question is the issue of self-regulation. Doctors and lawyers can get rid of bad doctors and lawyers who are a blot on the profession. Teachers can’t. A step in the right direction, though, would [...]