World News Center
D.C. teacher evaluation system has its fans in classrooms
March 21, 2010George Parker, president of the Washington Teachers Union, told me last year that the District's new evaluation program had no "appropriate system of support to improve instruction" and was "bad for kids." He suggested I contact more teachers to learn the many flaws of IMPACT, the program's name.
Parents of high school freshmen denied AP need to study the facts
March 21, 2010 My wife and I sometimes got emotionally involved with high school issues when our children attended. High school counts. Parents can get upset. So I paid close attention when two Arlington County mothers contacted me, separately, about a flap over Advanced Placement World History in ninth grade.
Give students a reality check: Assign more nonfiction books.
March 21, 2010It wasn't until I was in my 50s that I realized how restricted my high school reading lists had been and how little they had changed for my three children. They were enthusiastic readers, as my wife and I were. But all, or almost all, of the required books for both generations were fiction.
Family: Eight essential life skills that schools can teach our kids
March 21, 2010I learned at an early age from my mother that there was more to school than reading, writing, arithmetic and lunch. She was a teacher. I was an eager student of the academic sort. That didn't impress her. She told me later it was clear I was ready to read when I was 4, but she refused to teach me because I needed more work on my social skills.
Jay Mathews: Teachers are key to making schools better
March 21, 2010I am late mentioning it. It's none of my business. But I think it might have been a bad idea to add what survey respondents were saying about the District's schools to The Washington Post's poll stories on the declining approval of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee.
Some say learning styles are myth, others say they're magic
March 21, 2010 If you are in a mischievous mood and want to get a rise out of your favorite teachers or principals, send them a copy of "Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence," in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Volume 9, No. 3, December 2008. (Actually, it came out in December 2009, but for a reason understood only by academics in the timeless search for truth, its official publication date was 12 months previous.)
U-Va. students protest lack of credits for IB courses
March 21, 2010On some days when Alexis Robertson was in the heavy-duty International Baccalaureate program at South Lakes High School in Fairfax County, she arrived at 7 a.m. and didn't leave until 8 p.m.
D.C. effort to assess teachers falls short, educator says
March 21, 2010Marni Barron, an innovative educator, shares my discomfort with many Washington area school districts that rate nearly 100 percent of their teachers as satisfactory. (I'm not kidding: Alexandria says 99 percent, Fairfax County, 99.1 percent, Montgomery County, 95, Loudoun County, 99, Prince George's County, 95.6, and so on.)
The Challenge Index: Compare incomes, college-level tests
March 21, 2010On this page, you see the results of the 12th annual Washington Post survey of high school student participation in college-level tests, what I call the Challenge Index. The ranked list of public schools -- both the Washington area version in The Post and the national version in Newsweek each June -- gets lots of attention, but the outrage and acclaim usually swirl around the issue of whether ranking schools is good for us.
Revised AP courses will emphasize concepts, not memorization
March 21, 2010 If someone told you the College Board was about to rip apart the SAT and rebuild it, would that excite/surprise/aggravate/frighten you? Me too. It's about to happen, not to the SAT, but to our nation's second-most influential test, Advanced Placement, with large consequences for our high schools and colleges.
