By John Thompson. A first post summarized the way that Paul Tough’s new article, previewing his new Helping Children Succeed, explains why we must celebrate the fact that “the much-criticized No Child Left Behind Act, which dominated federal education policy for the past decade and a half, was finally …
By John Thompson. Part One: (read Part Two here). I can’t wait to read and reread Paul Tough’s new book, Helping Children Succeed: What works and Why. Tough’s Atlantic Magazine preview mostly prompted unadulterated joy from reading such an excellent synthesis of scientific research. But it also serves as a …
By Anthony Cody. Here is where we stand with the revived controversy over the Los Angeles Times’ 2010 “investigation” into teacher effectiveness. In 2009, Teachers College, which sponsors The Hechinger Report, received a grant from the Gates Foundation in the amount of $652,493 in order “to support the …
By John Thompson. My first response to “The Push and Pull of Research: Lessons from a Multi-site Study of Research Use in Education Policy,” by Christopher Lubienski, Elizabeth Debray, Janelle Scott, was clichéd. Being an optimist, I’ve kept asking why education research is misused so badly, and when smart …
By Anthony Cody. This week the Los Angeles Times published an editorial chastising the Gates Foundation for their role in education reform. The editors wrote: …the Gates Foundation has spent so much money — more than $3 billion since 1999 — that it took on an unhealthy amount of power in the setting of …
By Anthony Cody. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, the CEO of the Gates Foundation, has released her first annual letter, describing the foundation’s work in a number of arenas around the world. In the US, their focus has been K-12 education, so here we have their appraisal of their own work. This summary is notable more …
By John Thompson. The most serious criticism of my book, A Teacher’s Tale, is that it focuses on the harm done by No Child Left Behind and underemphasizes the threat of corporate school reform. During my fulltime teaching career, however, I saw just one overt example of national reformers trying to impose …
By Anthony Cody. As the corporate reform project begins to fray around the edges, one of the main sponsors is resorting to more overtly political tactics. The Gates Foundation is ostensibly a charitable enterprise, and enjoys significant tax benefits as a result of this status. Bill Gates himself described the …
By Anthony Cody. Alexander Russo is an unlikely ombudsman for education journalism, given that he is paid to blog by publishing giant Scholastic. But he has taken on the role, and in this column, he argues that the Broad Foundation sponsorship of education coverage at the Los Angeles Times is not worthy of the …
By John Thompson. When Dale Russakoff conceived of The Prize, she “viewed education reform from a distance but as a movement full of promise.” She was eager to follow the story of Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million matching gift to the Newark schools. The subtitle, “Who’s in Charge of …
