A Better Path to Learning

Tag: teachers

  • Friday News Roundup

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    It’s Friday. Here’s your News Roundup. Trump Administration Abruptly Cancels National Exam for High Schoolers (EducationWeek) According to EducationWeek: “The Trump administration abruptly canceled a test that has measured the math and reading skills of the nation’s 17-year-olds for more than 50 years, speaking concern among education policy experts that recent federal spending cuts will…

  • Higher Education Struggles

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    Higher education is not a primary focus of ABPTL, but an article posted by The Atlantic this morning caught my eye. The article, “Grad School Is in Trouble,” begins: “Jennie Bromberg was somehow still exuberant last weekend about her future career in public health. In January, she interviewed for a competitive Ph.D. program in epidemiology…

  • The Federal Role

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    I’ve never been a big Jeb Bush fan – either as a governor, a presidential candidate, or an educational reformer. But portions of his opinion piece in today’s EducationWeek online made sense to me, especially his advice on national accountability and family choice. Bush writes: “The federal government often falls short of solving our most…

  • A Mississippi Error

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    It was bound to happen. With all of the cuts Elon Musk and his DOGE folks made in areas like public education, they were bound to eliminate funding for a project that was actually working and working extremely well. The 74 reported the following this week in two separate articles: “When Mississippi lawmakers in 2013…

  • The Question of Research

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    Donald Trump doesn’t impress me as someone who is interested in the value of research. This was evident last week when his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) minions, led my Elon Musk, shut down grants and contracts for various research activities at the institute of Education Sciences (IES). Today, in an article published in The…

  • Friday News Roundup

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    It’s Friday! And it’s warming up here in Iowa. Time for the News Roundup. Standards Gap: Why So Many Students Score Proficient on State Tests But Not on NAEP (The 74) Why are state standardized test scores so much higher than scores on NAEP, or our Nation’s Report Card? The 74 reported this week that,…

  • Musk and Trump – Saviors of Learning?

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    Until we find a better system of learning for our kids, we have a moral and ethical responsibility to provide the best K-12 educational system possible for current students, their families, and their communities. Blowing up the current system, without a viable alternative for students to migrate to, won’t work. We learned this during our…

  • Raised to Obey

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    “The expansion of primary education in the West was driven not by democratic ideals, but by the state’s desire to control citizens, and to control them by targeting children at an age when they are very young and susceptible to external influence and to teach them at that young age that it’s good to respect…

  • A Matter of Money

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    I remember sitting in a district leadership meeting one morning, listening to a fellow high school principal lament about how strapped for money his school was (his school wasn’t hurting for resources). Finally, he exclaimed “Just once I’d like to try ‘more money’ as a solution to all of the problems his high school and…

  • A Presidential Review

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    It’s President’s Day, so it might be a good time to look back at how our presidents approached K-12 education, beginning with Jimmy Carter. Today, EducationWeek spotlighted presidential challenges and successes in a series of online articles. Below are excerpts from those pieces:  Jimmy Carter – “Jimmy Carter campaigned for president on a promise of…