John Thompson

Eli Broad's Education Week Commentary "Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste" proves the dictum that a journal of record should never deny a billionaire the soap box he craves, even if he offers little of substance. Especially when a corporate leader is just pontificating, always let him...

At the end of another spring testing season, the slimy feeling it leaves would be a terrible thing to waste. While the latest bubble-in testing scandals are fresh in our minds, we should redouble efforts to end our educational civil war. Think of how the divisiveness would decrease...

If Secretary of Education Arne Duncan had had any idea what the $45 million Gates Foundation's Measuring Teaching Effectiveness (MET) project would find (and overlook), would he have gambled so heavily on test-driven policies in the Race to the Top and his other "teacher quality" reforms?

Over two years...

When my father died, only one group offered more heart-felt consolation than black female teenagers. The most emotional condolences came from my black male students and basketball buddies. Almost all of them volunteered their feelings about intense father-yearnings and often said they were watching for insights about the ways that...

President Obama, who I support, has encouraged even more primitive, bubble-in educational malpractice than President Bush did. But, in his State of the Union Address, even the president said that we should "teach with creativity and passion," and "stop teaching to the test."

I drafted a post asking why President...

Oklahoma's law that requires students to pass four End of Instruction tests to earn a high school degree will take effect this spring. I am agnostic about those sorts of graduation exams. A blue ribbon panel of the National Research Council concluded that graduation tests have reduced their...

When asked to evaluate the French Revolution, Zhou En-lai, supposedly said, "It is too soon to say." As we mark the tenth anniversary of No Child Left Behind, the law's defenders are making the same argument.

So, reporters must follow the convention of saying that "the jury...

As the tenth anniversary of No Child Left Behind approaches, the obvious question about bubble-in mania -- I mean "consequential accountability" -- is being asked by Mark Schneider in "Has the Accountability Movement Run Its Course?" Schneider acknowledges that the "accountability movement has likely reached a point of...

Diane Ravitch has again done the seemingly impossible. She prompted Education Sector's Kevin Carey to take a glance at the history of education. Even so, Carey's piece in The New Republic, "The Dissenter," indicates that he did not read carefully.

Carey wrote that Ravitch "left a polarized...

The Wallace Foundation's "Reimagining the School Day," points the way towards creating the "community schools" necessary to provide educational futures for our most economically disadvantaged children. It includes another good report, "More Time for Learning," by the Education Sector's Elena Silva and Susan Headden, on extending the time...

This week's debate between Eric Hanushek and Diane Ravitch, exemplifies the tendency of true believers in data-driven policies to refuse to communicate with educators. Hanushek became so preoccupied with name-calling that he forgot that advocates of risky policy gambles have just as much of a burden of proof for their...

There is plenty that is wrong with the Duncan administration's rushed mandate to turnaround schools. Mostly, it looks like a "race to the bottom" for school transformations. But, a few turnarounds may be bringing some reality-based policies to urban education. Due to School Improvement Grants (S.I.G.), "reformers" may...

A truly brilliant idea for fixing America's inner city schools has come out of Washington. D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown seeks to recruit top teachers to low performing schools by freeing them for two or three years from the district's oppressive IMPACT evaluation system.

Former Chancellor Michelle...

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan can now do something that his boss has also been reluctant to do -- acknowledge mistakes and work with some of their most loyal supporters to set them right. The NCLB waiver process, which is designed to clean up the mess created by President Bush's...

At a time when Alexander Russo, who has long been sympathetic to the accountability movement, predicts that the "reform 'bubble'" is bursting, the movie Moneyball provides a fantastic opportunity to review what worked with data-driven reforms and what they failed to accomplish.

The contemporary school "reform" movement came...

The slander that "hundreds" of charter schools have produced dramatic gains while keeping "the same students" has long played a destructive role. There seems to be evidence, however, that tens of charters have shown real improvements without weeding out the most difficult-to-educate students.

The Philadelphia Notebook reports...

Everyone should follow the link to Ramona Diaz's excellent, The Learning. Diaz's PBS Point of View documentary chronicles four Filipina teachers and their year in some of the toughest Baltimore schools. It focuses on the social costs endured by immigrants and a clash of cultures. Diaz's masterpiece, however,...

At my age, I can play basketball with high school kids but only if I do some cheating. So, I am sympathetic with the idea that charters are so young that they need to foul their opponents a little to outscore neighborhood schools. It is time, however, for charters to...

As explained in Tavis Smiley's PBS report, "Too Important to Fail," the way we look at black boys is "America's litmus test." Smiley approaches the challenges facing black males with the good sense and the good will of our nation's archetypical "Everyman." The result is a jewel of...

I don't know what I think about Ali Carr-Chellman's indictment of education's disrespect for boy's culture. Being a high school teacher, I see the results of our failure to meet the "literacy needs of our boys from three to thirteen." But I do not see more aggression by...