Class Struggle - Jay Mathews' Education Blog - May 31, 2009

Experience Corps: Tutoring That Works

I get a lot of telephone calls and e-mails. Everyone seems to have a foolproof way to save our kids from ignorance and sloth. They all sound wonderful -- new Web sites, reading curricula, school designs, math tests, music lessons,...

Extra Credit: There's a Place for Cut-and-Paste Learning, And It's Not Fourth Grade

Dear Extra Credit: Because you asked, I think I can give you a fairly clear example of how the emphasis on testing is taking over instructional methods. I have three children in Fairfax County schools. When my sons (now...

Jay on the Web: Why Michelle Rhee Is Wrong on Merit Pay for Teachers

Jay Mathews wrote in Monday's column that charter schools -- not Michelle Rhee's plan -- offer a good model for merit pay for teachers: Rhee has proposed paying teachers as much as $135,000 a year based on achievement gains,...

Admissions 101: Recommend a College for Students With Special Needs

Two years ago, Jay Mathews asked for recommendations on the best schools for students with special needs. No, not just learning disabilities. Jay was looking for everything from the best intramural sports programs to schools that were good at motivating...

The Evolution of Randi Weingarten, Part 2

Many scoffed, with good reason, at my suggestion a few weeks back that American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten was going soft on the rising generation of pugnacious and vaguely anti-union school innovators and their billionaire backers. I wasn’t...

Charter Schools Provide Good Model on Teacher Pay

It is hard for me to find a school leader with a track record for raising student achievement who does not admire almost everything Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee is doing with the D.C. schools. Yeah, I said almost. One...

Texting vs. Teaching: Who Wins?

Our high schools are full of secretly texting, blithely unengaged adolescents, my colleague Dan de Vise reveals today in a story on a Montgomery County proposal to let students text during lunch. Dan’s story describes the situation well. Educators...

Class Struggle: May 31, 2009 - June 6, 2009