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Charter Schools: Good or Bad Alternative?

Numerous studies have tried to assess the charter school movement. This is like trying to say public schools in general are successful or are unsuccessful. Charter schools vary enormously from highly experimental to ultra traditional, from serving affluent suburban students to rescuing high-need students, and from tiny to huge. Judgments about charter schools usually focus [...]

EDUCATION REFORM IS BIGGEST URBAN LEGEND

According to an interesting web site, education reform in the United States is a myth. Reform implies that something is being made better, and that clearly is not the case when it comes to education, writes one unhappy blogger. The fun goes on and on, day after day while our children continue to get sub-par [...]

Metaphors about Schooling

“Movements of Mind: The Matrix, Metaphors, and Re-imagining Education,” an article in Teachers College Record, describes two common metaphors for schools: education as production and education as cure. Metaphors can handicap creativity but also clarify what one actually believes. This fascinating, though long article, describes several other, possibly more useful, metaphors: -Education as growth -Learning [...]

Can competition really improve schools?

An article in the Christian Science Monitor, “Can competition really improve schools” reviews the concept of choice of schools ranging from open enrollment to vouchers. It points out that people of means have always had a choice of schools by where they choose t0 live or the ability to purchase a private school education. There’s [...]

Schools of the Future

Ian Jukes and Ted McCain describe their vision of tomorrow’s schools in an article “New Schools for a New Age.” They write of the speed of change impacting the world and that will hit education where we least expect it. They describe the difference in expectations of workers and citizens in the future world of [...]

Virtual Schools, More Choices

The US Department of Education estimates that 50,000 students from 37 states attend virtual schools either full or part-time, a very rapidly expanding sector of school choice. Though critics worry about the lack of social contact and lack of regulation, parents are making the selection just as they do in the realm of homeschooling. The [...]

Thoughtful Essay on Choices

David Kirkpatrick has written often on providing parents with the ultimate choice of where and how to education their children. He comments that the present system essentially does that for middle and upper income families but not for low income families. His periodic column provides thoughtful commentary on contemporary education. He brings a long history [...]