Ditch Testing: Lessons from the Atlanta Scandal (Part 3): No Technical Fix: Human Nature?
Chester E. Finn says cheating on test scores “is about human nature.” Assuming cheating is human nature, then it would be logical to accept one of two assumptions: a) everyone cheats or has the tendency to cheat or b) some people are more likely to cheat than others by nature. But applying either one to the Atlanta situation raises more questions.
Fact 1: 80% of schools, nearly 200 educators, and 1,508 classes participated in cheating that had been ongoing …

Not an Anomaly: Systemic Ills Caused by Test-based Accountability Policies
Secretary Duncan is not the only who tries to minimize the scale of the problem and reduce it to a technical issue. Chester E. Finn, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He is a former assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Education under President Ronald Reagan, tries to do same. In his essay entitled Don’t ditch testing after Atlanta cheating, boost test security and published as a CNN special on July …

Ditch Testing: Lessons from the Cheating Scandal in Atlanta (Part 1)
Last week a state investigation in Georgia confirmed massive cheating in Atlanta Public Schools. A total of 178 educators in 44 elementary and middle schools in the district were named in the report as participants in cheating on the state’s standardized test mandated by NCLB. This is not the first and certainly won’t be the last case of corruption in the nation’s schools. There are ongoing investigations in many other locales, most recently, Philadelphia. While laying blame on these educators, …

Can you be globally competitive by closing your doors and raising test scores?
“Can America be globally competitive by closing its doors and raising test scores in math and reading?” asked an educator from the Netherlands at an international education conference recently. The question was directed at a speaker from the U.S. who had been telling the familiar story of how miserable American education is compared to other countries such as China, India, and Finland.
The question was meant to be rhetorical because the answer should obviously be “no,” at least to …

Race to the Top, Obama Administration’s $4.35 billion education initiative, has been touted many times by the President and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as “the most meaningful education reform in a generation”. It is also been proposed as the blueprint for the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently bearing the more notorious title No Child Left Behind (NCLB). I have always found Race to the Top amusingly sad and educationally harmful and written about it in different places including an op-ed piece in …

A Nation At Risk – April 1983
Edited by Yong Zhao, March, 2011
Next month marks the 28th anniversary of the publication of A Nation At Risk, one of the most influential education documents in the US history. As an English language learner, I have always been impressed with the prose and composition of this document, although I have raised questions about its content in my book.
The title of the document captures the present condition of American education very well. The goals and aspirations are well stated and I agree with them. …

A Bold Education Experiment: What We Should Learn From China
World’s longest high-speed rail networks, fastest trains, fastest computer, second largest economy, and #1 standing in international tests are just more recent evidence many outside observers cite to show why the rest of the world should learn from China’s education system and what helped make “the Chinese Tiger Mom” story a best seller. But as I have written on this site and in my book, Catching Up or Leading the Way, the glorification of China’s education is ill founded and attention …

(This is a fairly long post. I am working on a conference (see last paragraph) on preparing students as global entrepreneurs. If you are interested, please let me know.)
In his recent weekly address, recorded while touring an Intel plant in Oregon, President Obama once again emphasized the importance of education for America to win the future. And once again, he identified the most important element of America’s strategy to compete globally as he did in his State of the Union address a few weeks ago: innovation.
The truth is, we have everything …

“It makes no sense:” Puzzling over Obama’s State of the Union Speech
“It makes no sense” is perhaps President Obama’s favorite phrase, using it twice in his 2011 State of the Union speech. I like the sound of it and what lies behind it—a simple way to point out the obviously illogical things that need to change. That is how I feel about the education section of his speech. It makes no sense.
President Obama wants to win the future by “out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.” “[I]f we …

You must be joking, Professor Chua: An open letter to the Chinese Tiger Mom
Dear Professor Chua,
By now, your Wall Street Journal article Why Chinese Mothers are Superior has circled around the globe and you have appeared on many media outlets. Undoubtedly you are aware of the firestorm the article has created everywhere. Frankly I was at first appalled by your article because I have read your book Days of Empire, in which you suggest that tolerance is the force that helped build great empires. But in this article, you seem …