"From our highest-performing districts to our most challenged, the Common Core lights the way along that path; the Common Core standards will help us to ensure that each of our students - regardless of zip code or family income - develops the skills and knowledge needed to graduate college- and...

If you read this headline and thought it was a double entendre, you are probably watching too much Comedy Central news. No. Jon Stewart and the Daily Show are not getting soft like a container of ice cream left out on the kitchen counter.

But Stewart may be losing...

On May 4, 2013 I attended a conference, Reclaiming the Conversation on Education, at Barnard College - Columbia University in New York City. The opening panelists included Susan Ohanian, author of Why Is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools?, Barbara Bowen, professor...

In a series of Huffington Post blogs I have questioned the role played by Pearson Education, an international conglomerate based in Great Britain, and its subsidies in American education. I want to thank readers who keep sending me Pearson updates.

According to Inside Higher Education, Pearson...

My eight-year-old grandchildren, Sadia and Gideon, seem to have survived the third grade ELA and Math tests without being scarred for life. From their perspective, it was "Much Ado About Nothing," and they were more concerned about the start of the little league baseball season in Brooklyn's Prospect Park.

For...

Attention: Charles Goldsmith, Head of Corporate Communications at Pearson Plc Emailed Sunday, April 21, 2013, noon, New York time

Dear Mr. Goldsmith

I am very upset about what I have documented as a pattern of poor performance by Pearson Education and its sub-divisions and their repeated failure to...

A giant portrait of Frederick Douglass stared down at the audience of about three hundred high school students, mostly from Long Island schools, who gathered in the Hofstra University student center to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington...

I confess, I may be guilty of helping students improve their scores on standardized tests. Just last week I was helping my eight-year old grandchildren, third-graders scheduled to take the new common core based tests, with their math homework. When they were finished, I asked Gideon and Sadia if they...

Note: I sent a draft of this draft blog to the head of Corporate Communications at Pearson Plc prior to posting to give Pearson an opportunity to respond in the body of text. I received a reply from Susan Aspey, Vice President of Media Relations for Pearson Public Affairs. Her...

Supreme Court Justices Sotomayer, Ginsburg, Kagan, Breyer, Roberts, and Kennedy seem determined to rule on the issue of same-sex marriage on the narrowest legal grounds. During preliminary questioning in Hollingsworth v. Perry, Sotomayer, Ginsburg, Kagan, and Breyer, the center-liberal wing on the Supreme Court, focused on whether the...

On Sunday we gathered with twenty-one friends and family members to celebrate a very untraditional Passover at our home in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. It was untraditional, first, because we were a night early, an accommodation to the modern world were adults have to work. The group ranged in age from...

A financial analysis for 2012 of the British-based publishing giant Pearson is available online at 4-traders.com. It tells a very interesting, if frightening story that needs to be more widely circulated in the United States, especially among parents, teachers, and educational policy makers. Something consistently missing in a...

Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn where I live, has been without a full-service supermarket since last June when the local Key Food on Prospect and 11th Avenues closed and the property was leased to Walgreens. Walgreens announced it would put a drug and convenience store with some food items in...

In Rockland County, New York, Irish American organizations are protesting against the commercialization of St. Patrick's Day, especially the sale of sexually suggestive and other offensive Irish-themed merchandise.

In the past, American nativists have used St. Patrick's Day parades as an opportunity to express anti-Irish and anti-immigrant sentiments....

I am a lifetime teacher, first in public schools and then in a university-based teacher education program. I think I do an honest job and that students benefit from being in my classes. I was hoping to hear something positive about the future of public education in President Obama's

In the wake of the mass killing of school children and school employees in Newtown, Connecticut, One Million Moms 4 Gun Control and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence have sponsored marches and rallies across the country to demand local, state, and federal gun control...

Do you ever wonder if the reporters and columnists for The New York Times read each other's columns? In January 2013, Nate Silver, the FiveThirtyEight statistical guru, Eduardo Porter, who writes an Economic Scene column, and Reed Abelson, an Economix blogger, all wrote about...

In his most recent State of the Union address, President Barack Obama promised "A country that leads the world in educating its people." In his second inaugural address, he promised to "reform our schools" as part of his administration's effort to promote "equality" and defend this...

Union-busting is not just happening in Wisconsin and Michigan.

On Wednesday, January 16, New York City unionized yellow school bus drivers went on strike. The strike affected more than half of the city's school buses. The New York Times charged the problem was...

It now looks like the last minute compromise between Democrats and Republicans on tax rates at the end of 2012 has only postponed the "fiscal cliff" by a few months. Once again Republicans in the House of Representatives are planning to block authorization of a new federal debt...