Parenthetical

I found this HuffPo column, What If We Treated Doctors The Way We Treat Teachers?, pretty compelling (in a preaching to the choir sort of way, of course). It begins with: We must begin to hold all physicians accountable, regardless of specialization, to certain quantifiable measures of health, namely cholesterol levels, blood pressure, weight, and [...]

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This article from The Atlantic has been making the rounds lately: What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success. Basically, Finland’s children are “accidentally” scoring at the top of the world’s standardized test charts, despite (because of) a system that focuses on “equality more than excellence.” For me, the crux is in this passage: [I]n [...]

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Diane Ravitch is an education expert I’ve long respected. As assistant secretary of education under George H. W. Bush and a member of conservative think-tanks, she was a strong supporter of No Child Left Behind. Now she’s come to believe the reliance on test-based “accountability” is a failure: KS: What do you think about the [...]

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I talk with adolescents all day, but I have limited experience with little kids. I get scared when confronted with a tiny, semi-verbal creature and tend to fall back on my instincts — which, I’m ashamed to say, with girls means I often compliment them on some aspect of their appearance. They (and their parents) [...]

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My initial response to Meghan Cox Gurdon’s incendiary WSJ column is here, but it got crazy long and I decided this topic needed its own post. Ok, so there’s a lot of dark YA lit because teens want to read it — both the Literature and the popcorn. There’s also tons of light YA lit. [...]

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My colleague posted this article, by “Professor X,” a private and community college professor: “An Anti-College Backlash?” (The Atlantic, Mar. 31, 2011) Oh, there’s so much going on here. I can’t address all of it right now, but here’s a start: [F]our-year college is perhaps not for everyone. Rather, for a growing proportion of students, [...]

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1. No Brownies at Bake Sales, but Doritos May Be O.K. raised my blood pressure way more than a whole plate of brownies (mmm… brownies): Nine months after effectively banning most fund-raising food sales in city schools, a city panel will vote Wednesday on an amended regulation that will allow student groups to sell items [...]

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In a recent post I set myself a challenge to read one grown-up book for every 2 or 3 YA books I read this year, to give myself the same chance at a literary lens for adulthood that I had for childhood/adolescence. For my first meal at the grown-up table, I picked The Abstinence Teacher, [...]

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