"Least influential of education's most influential information sources."
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"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"
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"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
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-- 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
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-- Sandy Kress
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"Fabulous"
-- Education Week's Alyson Klein
"thugs"
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Smart List: 60 People Shaping the Future of K-12 Education
Here’s a thought. Today, just about anyone can create a “college” or a “university” given a nonexistent formal or informal review board with matching standards. The great fear of course, has to do with academic freedom and the stifling hand of regulation. Still, there are the existing accreditation institutions and one weakness of the current system has to do with the ill-informed consumer of higher education who may not care or understand the system. Knowing this, private and very much for profit higher education providers have been free to game the entire system and potentially render it’s value mostly cloudy with a good chance of flooding.
Public ECE-12 education is next.
All students should receive the same educational opportunities so that he/she can choose to pursue a college education or not. (Figuring out how to pay for college is a whole different story.) The bigger problem I see is that if you don’t attend college, what are your career opportunities? With the push for “college for all,” we’ve neglected the skilled trades that keep our society growing (electricians, plumbers, welders, etc). Our vocational education programs are mediocre at best, we don’t encourage apprenticeships (which are very different from paid or unpaid internships), and we don’t teach sufficient life skills in standard K-12 education.
It’d be wonderful to have all students attend college, but we need to recognize: 1) some students truly don’t want to attend university, 2) financially – higher education isn’t an option for many families, and 3) getting a college degree in today’s economy doesn’t guarantee you a job. Our “college for all” education system is failing students who don’t want to, or cannot attend university, but who still want to be productive citizens with stable careers and income stability.