We have prolonged the debate over teacher preparation and the primary nominal provider of it for too long, without any appreciable enhancement of the quality of preparation we desperately need for the advancement of student achievement.  We need radical change, beginning with terminating undergraduate teacher preparation as we know it through colleges of education.  […]

  In June, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) released its long-awaited report on teacher preparation and, to the surprise of almost no one, it was a devastating critique of the nation’s colleges of education.  The full report, which provides data on 1,130 institutions and ratings for 608 of them based on a rigorous […]

In the May issue, I noted that it was crunch time for school accountability in Texas, as the Texas Legislature wound down to final decisions on several bills, most significantly one that would drastically reduce the standard for high school graduation as measured by standardized high school end of course assessments.  Unfortunately, this bill passed […]

The only segment of the MSNBC network I can stomach is the half hour or so of Morning Joe I watch on the treadmill every morning, during which we are treated to periodic commercials for the network featuring its various personalities touting the institutional motto “Lean Forward”, which I assume is a proxy for progressivism.  […]

  The firestorm over standardized testing in the K-12 accountability system that has been building in Texas for over two years is coming to a major showdown, and the primary context of the debate is now House Bill 5, which passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 145-2 and, after several amendments, was […]

The recent release of the March employment data reflecting the pitiful growth in net new jobs for the month of 88,000, while almost half a million more Americans left the labor force during the month, sent the experts scurrying once again to explain why, four years after the technical end of the so-called great recession, […]

With the regular Texas legislative session about one-third complete, the battle lines in public education are coming into sharper focus on the four major issues identified last year by our organization, the Texas Institute for Education Reform (TIER).  What is at stake is no less than the future direction of standards and accountability based reform […]

In the fall edition of Education Next, Paul Peterson and his coauthors Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woesmann attempt to answer the question, “Is the U. S. Catching Up?”, the title to their article suggested by the recent pronouncement in a new book by Yu Xie of the University of Michigan that “American high school students […]

  For the past year in almost every available venue, opponents of high stakes standardized assessments of public school student achievement have been droning on about the perceived oppression of the Texas public school accountability system, which has been rated by national education organizations as having produced the best high school graduation standard in the […]

Early in August we were treated to news from the Texas Education Agency that Texas high school graduation rates have reached an all-time high of 86%.  Regardless of the qualifications one might add to this number, this represents the continuation of an increasing trend in graduation rates over the past 20 years of standards and […]