Thursday April 22 is Earth Day! Here is a website with fun activities for the classroom. http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson174.shtml

A recent article I read in the Wall Street Journal said that Chinese students attend 41 more days of school and therefore recieve 30% more hours of instruction than students in the US and many other nations have school on Saturdays or longer schooldays. This additional time spent learning is one big reason that youngsters from many Asian nations routinely out-score their American counterparts on international tests of science and math.

Although some US schools have figured this out and

A New York Times article called “Making College Relevant” describes the pressures that colleges and universities face to convince students that their programs will help them find jobs. Some schools are cancelling majors such as philosophy or classics that are unpopular and that don’t translate to the workplace in an obvious way. Other schools are devot

Margaret Spellings, the former Secretary of Education, gave an interesting interview this morning on National Public Radio. The interviewer asked her about No Child Left Behind, which Spellings helped implement during the George W. Bush administration, and Race to the Top and other Obama administration education initiatives, which look to supplant much of NCLB.

I was especially interested in her take on testing. When asked if the emphasis on high-stakes tests just encourages te

It's that time of year again -- standardized test time. Many of my friends who teach at elementary and junior high schools just got done adminstering the state standardized tests. With the importance placed on standardized testing, there's pressure for students to perform perfectly. It's been interesting hearing their strategies for helping their students succeed.

One friend, who teaches fifth grade, had a more casual strategy. She said her biggest obstacle was calming her stud