There is really nothing surprising about William Johnson’s op ed in The New York Times Sunday Review. Mr. Johnson eloquently describes the plight of many teachers in contemporary urban American schools under the peculiar and confused pressure of state and national efforts to reform education through reliance on high stakes testing. Mr. Johnson has the courage and patience to work with some of the most difficult students encountered in a public high school. These students do not receive high marks, nor do classes with difficult students conform to anyone’s vision of the ideal classroom. That is what makes them difficult.  Read more...

The 2011 version of the  MetLife Survey of the American Teacher (28th Annual) shows that only 44% of the teachers surveyed are ‘very satisfied with their jobs’, down from 59% in 2009. The article reviews possible factors behind that drop and suggests areas of concern to anyone paying attention to the state of public education.  Read more...

Marian Wright Edelman, President of the Children’s Defense Fund and vocal advocate for our nation’s children, has pulled important data from the most recent Department of Education Civil Rights Data Collection Survey. Citing the 2009-2010 version, she speaks to things we know all too well: “inequities in funding and educational resources place poor children in low-performing schools, with inadequate facilities and often ineffective teachers.”  Read more...

When reviewing another article in the seemingly endless debate about homework (“Are You Down With or Done With Homework?”), it struck me that educators and parents would be better off using this time-honored educational tradition as a way to zero in on an individual student’s approach to learning or their grasp of the work being covered in class.  Read more...

Last week the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012 was awarded jointly to John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent  Read more...