The concern about the quality of education is not unique to the states. East Asia is famous for parents pouring money into expensive cram schools and tutors to supplement their children’s education. This supplementary education has come to be both common and expected. In fact, students who aren’t enrolled inRead More

Having decided to write an article about different learning styles and then having realized I knew nothing about the topic, I conceded that a little bit of background reading would be more than helpful.  Lost on a discursive path of search results and suggested reading links, I ended up onRead More

Ever since standardized test results became tied to school success and teacher performance, there has been a correlating rise of complaint that teachers are only teaching to the test. What exactly does teaching to the test mean and is it a bad thing? Teaching to the test means that curriculumRead More

Earlier this year, Dallas ISD superintendent Mike Miles launched his Imagine 2020 program to help boost achievement and morale in beleaguered schools concentrated in the neighborhoods of West Dallas and Fair Park.  As the Dallas Morning News’s web portal Dallas News explains, students at higher-risk schools in these neighborhoods faceRead More

According to a recent study from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), while pockets of adult populations across the world exhibit limited facility with literacy, numeracy, and ICT-based problem solving, American adults, on average, universally rank lower than their peers across all three categories.  A series of testsRead More

As of September 30, Texas public schools are no longer subject to provisions of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act that govern student performance on standardized tests.  Previously, legislation stipulated that if 90% of students in a given school or district did not meet established thresholds on statewideRead More

On October 17th, twenty-three school districts participating in the Texas High Performance Schools Consortium met to discuss alternatives to existing evaluation systems which consortium-members claim are too dependent on results from the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) test.  The STAAR test is an annual assessment for TexasRead More

The observation that American society seems to place a higher premium on extroversion (and, by extension, extroverts) than on introversion (and, you guessed it, introverts) should hardly be cause for debate.  After all, this is a culture that has produced and retained the likes of the elevator pitch, the businessRead More

With the Common Core Standards kicking in this year, a lot has been made about the new model, both good and bad, but the most interesting aspect to a lover of literature, such as myself, is the debate about the new Reading Lists that were constructed for students K-12. DavidRead More

I do a lot of test prep tutoring, and it amazes me how similar my students’ concerns are regardless of age, gender, skill foundation, and even the test they’re taking. This is for them. An open letter to the kids taking standardized tests: You are somewhere in the middle ofRead More

“Faster, faster!” yelled my backseat, male, teenage companion.  It was a somewhat cold and rainy day as my sixteen-year-old self and two friends drove through my high school’s campus but my eagerness to impress my friends did not combine well with the slick, windy road.  The car’s stability control wasn’tRead More

by: Erin Howland   In my junior year of high school, my AP European History teacher became demonically possessed by the idea that creating a restaurant would be the most fun and effective way to learn about Renaissance culture. The assignment was to use one 8.5x11in paper and to drawRead More

Three things are certain in life: death, taxes, and rapidly increasing tuition costs –or at least that’s probably how many college students and their parents feel.  According to long-term data gathered by the College Board Annual Survey of Colleges and the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES), college tuition costsRead More

Tens of thousands of eighth graders are in a frenzy studying for the Educational Record Bureau’s Upper Level ISEE, usually administered in January. This nationally normed standardized test is one of the most widely required entrance exams for independent high schools in the US. Just in time, General Academic, aRead More

by: Neelay Patel   In a development recently highlighted by the Houston Chronicle, schools are cutting back on generally less valued positions. Librarians, art and music teachers, and physical education teachers are gradually being forced to seek other jobs. History or math teachers with a knack for sports are offeredRead More

After teaching a Geometry class for socially “plugged-in” ninth graders this summer and spending a few weekends with my smart-phone-using teenage brother, all I can think about is, “Which apps are they using?” and “Do they use their phones this much in school?” A survey conducted by The Pew ResearchRead More