IF YOU DON'T STOP YELLING THIS INSTANT!!!!!

Yup, admit it, you yell at your kids, even when you know it's the wrong thing to do. Well, you're in the same boat as everyone else. The NY Times reports.

How to Help Good Teachers and Undermine Education

The more successful the teacher, the more he or she should be paid. Makes sense. Unfortunately, in at least one study, it doesn't work. When teachers get paid more if students get good grades, you get grade inflation. When teachers get paid more if students do well on standardized tests, school becomes a series of test-prep workshops, and real mastery is cast by the wayside. When only some teachers can gain the salary bonuses, then teachers start competing with one another and stop collaborating.

How Schools Can Beat the Recession and Improve Test Scores

This is really too bad to be true. A school in North Caroline is, quite literally, selling points on a test, in order to raise money. (If this is succesful, perhaps they can raise even more by having kids pay not to bother coming.)

Who is a Jew, but with a British Accent

The fact that the British government pays for the secular education in Jewish day schools is obviously an advantage. The disadvantage is that their courts get to decide who is a Jew. The NY Times reports.

The Next Generation of Debt

What do today's students need to know about the massive debt that they will end up paying back for the US? Not much, it seems. But this website can help. (Warning: it's pretty depressing.)

Bowing to the gods of the test score

Who cares about broadening horizons, experiencing new things, airing out, multi-sensory learning, and just plain fun!? Now that the NY Times has set me straight, I now understand the real reason to take urban kids on a field trip to the farm: it boosts their test scores.

Teachers Can Save the Planet

It's the little things that matter, like chalk vs. dry-erase markers . You CAN save the planet!

Kids, 1; Parents, 0

A new generation of children's books shows tantrumy, defiant kids pushing around their namby-pamby, politically correct parents. It's not a pretty sight.

Cultural Literacy: Does It Work?

Its an old debate between those who claim that "real" education involves extensive background knowledge in an established cultural canon, and the constructivists, who argue that any given canon is artificial and that we should give students more leeway in determining what they learn and how they learn it. Perhaps the experience in one State can help answer that question once and for all (or not).

Lishmah!

Well, it's not Torah Lishmah, but it is Mortimer Adler (founder of the "great-books" movement) reflecting on a lifetime of learning for its own sake.

Debate Continued

Cross Currents chose to remove their response to my review of the Koren-Sacks siddur (they have not responded to emails suggesting that an explanation or apology might be in order). For better or worse, nothing really disappears from the internet, and the Cross Currents piece is still being read and debated here.

I had thought about writing a longer response to Cross Currents, and if things continue perhaps I will, but for the moment I encourage people to read my original essay here at the First Things website, and compare it to their attack. The essays speak for themselves, I think.

Koren-Sacks Siddur: Debate is in the Air

My recent review of the Koren Sacks Siddur appears here. A writer at Cross-Currents, it seems, does not agree with my assesment.

Sounds Good on Paper...

Every parent has heard it: Positive reinforcement; explain clearly your expectations from your child; model proper behavior; find meaningful and natural rewards for their good behavior; remain calm and under control of your parenting emotions. So, what do you do when none of that works? Slate reports.

Disheartened Teachers

The bad news is that about 40% of K-12 teachers in the US are "disheartened": frustrated with their jobs, burnt out, not confident that they can actually help kids. The good news is that about 23% of teachers are motivated idealists. Unfortunately, what this study cannot tell us is whether the disheartened teachers are frustrated because they are not very good at their jobs, because the work in problematic schools, because they are poorly paid, or because something is wrong with the system. Would the stats in Jewish schools be any different?

How To Cheat With a Cell Phone

Its not that difficult to cheat on a test or paper using a cellphone, and according to this poll, "everybody's doing it."