I want this book August 30, 2008

The book is Sweating the Small Stuff:  Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism, by David Whitman, and it examines six schools that are succeeding, in part because they explicitly teach middle-class values.  The Core Knowledge blog and Thoughts on Education have thoughtful articles responding to the book.

The question is, are these techniques widely replicable?  Or are they succeeding only because they are able to be selective, they are able to expel students who misbehave, and they have young, underpaid teachers who devote most of their waking hours to work?

Teach for America August 5, 2008

There’s a great article in the latest Newsweek about TFA and the problem of attracting and retaining the best teachers.  As I said in my post about what policymakers ought to know, our schools of education need attention.  Unfortunately, they don’t manage to attract the best and the brightest.

(Last year Wonder Woman — our great master teacher, now gone on to better, more hopeful schools — found out where I went to college.  “What are you doing here?” she asked, confounded.)

Anyway, the article is worth reading.