Archive: Trends
Best book ever on how to prepare students for college
We have had blue ribbon commissions, congressional committees, corporate roundtables, university consortiums and dozens of non-profit organizations struggle with the central question of American education: How do we prepare students for success in college? The written output of these groups...
By Jay Mathews | November 6, 2009; 07:00 AM ET | Comments (26)
Want your school to try Advanced Placement? Here's how.
I have written this weekly online column for almost a decade. From the beginning, one of its goals was to be ahead of every other media outlet in news and arguments about Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses and...
By Jay Mathews | October 30, 2009; 07:00 AM ET | Comments (7)
21st century skills: another disappointment
I am trying NOT to write off the 21st century skills movement as a sham, but its leaders don’t make it easy....
By Jay Mathews | October 23, 2009; 07:00 AM ET | Comments (19)
The Pros and Cons of Squelching Gifted Students
I have been writing about schools for a long time. It is difficult to surprise me. But some of the many people who wrote to me about my Oct. 5 column on Howard County’s reluctance to accelerate a gifted...
By Jay Mathews | October 16, 2009; 06:00 AM ET | Comments (32)
A Crazy Idea for Middle Schools
When education pundits like me talk about the American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland, Calif., the conversation is always about the middle school's leader, Ben Chavis. He is very different from us data-sifting eggheads. It is not an exaggeration...
By Jay Mathews | October 2, 2009; 06:00 AM ET | Comments (27)
Egad! School Research Has Power
I have long believed that politicians never read education research reports, and if they do, only believe the ones that confirm their biases. Timothy A. Hacsi's brilliant 2002 book, "Children As Pawns: The Politics of Education Reform," proved this...
By Jay Mathews | September 9, 2009; 04:41 PM ET | Comments (6)
A Hot Beach Debate for Edu-Nerds Like Me
Editor's Note: If you like cool online-polling devices, feel free to skip to the bottom of this column, make some clicks and then circle back for Jay's Take.... Those of us who spend our days mesmerized by discussions of summer...
By Washington Post Editors | July 3, 2009; 05:45 AM ET | Comments (7)
Jay's Take: One Way to Save Struggling Teachers--Maybe
My colleague Dan de Vise provides an intriguing look at teacher support efforts on our front page Monday, in what many seasoned educators think is the best way to help bad teachers--regular counseling and review by experts. His subject...
By Washington Post editors | June 29, 2009; 03:36 PM ET | Comments (0)
The Community College Placement Mess
Newspaper reporters, a group to which I belonged until recently, usually don’t write about old reports, unless of course the documents have been suppressed for years by nefarious government minions. If a reporter tells her editor she has found a...
By Washington Post editors | June 19, 2009; 05:00 AM ET | Comments (1)
Shocker! Some Teachers Like AP for All
When I got to work Monday, I was certain I was about to be pummeled by e-mails telling me what an idiotic column I had written that day praising high schools that were trying to get everyone, even struggling students,...
By Washington Post editors | June 12, 2009; 06:00 AM ET | Comments (4)
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,...
By Washington Post editors | June 5, 2009; 05:00 AM ET | Comments (2)
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...
By Washington Post editors | June 2, 2009; 06:00 AM ET | Comments (0)
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...
By Washington Post editors | June 1, 2009; 06:21 AM ET | Comments (10)
An Attack on Preschool for All
As usual, I have taken the lazy columnist’s approach to the crucial issue of preschools in America. What little I have written about it has been how to find the best pre-Ks and preschools, and what it is about them...
By Washington Post editors | May 29, 2009; 03:00 AM ET | Comments (6)
How to Miss School Even When You're in School
My colleague Dan de Vise's wonderful piece Tuesday about the Darnestown, Md., student who never missed a day of school has had a terrific reaction. Like me, readers appreciated Dan's tribute to old-fashioned values, such as dependability and persistence, which...
By Washington Post editors | May 27, 2009; 01:06 PM ET | Comments (32)
An Intriguing Alternative to No Child Left Behind
If the No Child Left Behind law, focused on raising test scores, proves to be a dead end, what do we do next? I rarely read or hear intelligent discussion of this question. The Pentagon has battle plans from A...
By Washington Post editors | May 22, 2009; 03:00 AM ET | Comments (10)
AP More Open, But Not Dumbed Down
More than a decade ago, when I began investigating the odd uses of Advanced Placement courses and tests in our high schools, I tried to find out why AP participation was so much lower than I expected in my neighborhood...
By Washington Post editors | May 1, 2009; 03:00 AM ET | Comments (21)
The Money Myth in Improving Schools
Hard battles lost long ago leave a mark. (The worst for me was the 1973 Super Bowl.) University of California at Berkeley professor W. Norton Grubb, for instance, still replays the 1971 Serrano v. Priest decision by the California Supreme...
By Washington Post editors | April 10, 2009; 03:00 AM ET | Comments (1)
Voucher Parents vs. Me
My March 23 column on the D.C. voucher program was not popular with parents of students in that program. I suggested the program enroll no more new students for the tax-funded scholarships to private schools. Instead, I said, let the...
By Washington Post editors | April 3, 2009; 03:00 AM ET | Comments (2)
Turmoil at Two KIPP Schools
My new book about the Knowledge Is Power Program, “Word Hard. Be Nice,” details the conflict, misunderstanding, heartbreak and chaos that accompanied the founding and growth of what has turned to be, in my view, the most educationally successful group...
By Washington Post editors | March 18, 2009; 05:07 PM ET | Comments (12)
Answering Your Questions: 20 Ways AP is Bad--Not!
The vigorous, but respectful, clash of comments in response to my Class Struggle column today, "20 Ways AP is Bad--Not!", pleases me because it mirrors the relationship Bruce Hammond of the Independent Curriculum Group and I have had as...
By washingtonpost.com editors | March 6, 2009; 02:53 PM ET | Comments (5)
20 Ways AP is Bad — Not!
Bruce G. Hammond, a well-regarded educator and former Advanced Placement teacher, is at it again. His organization, Excellence Without AP, has changed its name to the Independent Curriculum Group (ICG). Hammond, based in Charlottesville, is the executive director. The group’s...
By Washington Post editors | March 6, 2009; 03:00 AM ET | Comments (22)
Will Depth Replace Breadth in Schools?
If our nation’s high school teachers had $20 for every time they had to endure the Depth vs. Breadth debate, they all would have retired to mansions in West Palm Beach. The debate goes like this: Should they focus on...
By Washington Post editors | February 27, 2009; 03:00 AM ET | Comments (21)
Trends: Banging on the PK-16 Pipeline
Why am I so ill-tempered when I read a sensible report like “Bridging the Gap: How to Strengthen the Pk-16 Pipeline to Improve College Readiness”? The authors, Ulrich Boser and Stephen Burd, know their stuff. The sponsoring organization, New...
By Washington Post editors | February 20, 2009; 03:00 AM ET | Comments (27)
Trends: Charter Vs. Pilot Schools
In the national charter school debate, Boston has special significance. The city has unleashed imaginative teachers to run both independent charter schools and semi-independent “pilot” schools, with much of the rest of the country waiting to see which does best....
By Washington Post editors | February 13, 2009; 03:00 AM ET | Comments (13)
Trends: Did Rap, Crack or TV Kill Reading?
Editor's note: Today, Class Struggle officially joins the blogosphere. Bookmark this new page to stay on top of all of Jay's writing and discussions. We'll be posting the Class Struggle column Fridays, the Extra Credit reader-response column Thursdays and Jay's...
By Washington Post editors | February 5, 2009; 03:55 PM ET | Comments (45)
Trends?
On Fridays Jay Mathews reviews education trends on Class Struggle. Check out the archives here....
By Washington Post Editors | November 30, 2008; 11:08 AM ET | Comments (0)
