"Least influential of education's most influential information sources."
-- Education Week Research Center
"full of very lively short items and is always on top of the news...He gets extra points for skewering my high school rating system"
-- Jay Mathews, The Washington Post
"a daily dose of information from the education policy world, blended with a shot of attitude and a dash of humor"
-- Education Week
"unexpectedly entertaining"..."tackle[s] a potentially mindfogging subject with cutting clarity... they're reading those mushy, brain-numbing education stories so you don't have to!"
-- Mickey Kaus
"a very smart blog... this is the site to read"
-- Ryan Lizza
"everyone who's anyone reads Eduwonk"
-- Richard Colvin
"designed to cut through the fog and direct specialists and non-specialists alike to the center of the liveliest and most politically relevant debates on the future of our schools"
-- The New Dem Daily
"peppered with smart and witty comments on the education news of the day"
-- Education Gadfly
"don't hate Eduwonk cuz it's so good"
-- Alexander Russo, This Week In Education
"the morning's first stop for education bomb-throwers everywhere"
-- Mike Antonucci, Intercepts
"…the big dog on the ed policy blog-ck…"
-- Michele McLaughlin
"I check Eduwonk several times a day, especially since I cut back on caffeine"
-- Joe Williams
"...one of the few bloggers who isn't completely nuts"
-- Mike Petrilli, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
"I have just three 'go to' websites: The Texas Legislature, Texas Longhorn sports, and Eduwonk"
-- Sandy Kress
"penetrating analysis in a lively style on a wide range of issues"
-- Walt Gardner
"Fabulous"
-- Education Week's Alyson Klein
"thugs"
-- Susan Ohanian
Smart List: 60 People Shaping the Future of K-12 Education
Great point here. And I’ve encountered this same thing in the field where people misappropriate or simply do a mental re-write of federal law to make a point that can’t be made any other way.
Today, for example, a group of teachers told me they were required “by the law” to teach certain lessons in a certain order to their students even though they all admitted that the lessons were inappropriate or irrelevant to their students’ needs.
They said they were obligated to teach certain things and had no other choice. I suggested that they could always choose to obligate themselves to helping children learn by teaching them the knowledge and skills they needed most — and that that was my reading of “the law.”
But this “interpretation” was rejected, I think, because it didn’t fit their paradigm of schooling.
We may be moving closer to better standards, better testing, and better curriculum, but we will not make much progress toward educating our children until we shift the dominant paradigm from teaching to learning.
NCLB has succumbed, it seems, a kind of reverse-Orwellianisn where “Big Brother”
… where Big Brother has been ironically out-Newspeaked.
Too your suggestion to the teachers and the required. I agree we needed to start teaching students more what they needed to know Or, focus on putting those lessons in a practical application that student will be able to use when they get out of school.