Opportunity to Learn Campaign Means Opportunity to Succeed

The National Opportunity to Learn Campaign, headquartered in Boston, is sponsored by the Schott Family Foundation. This is an important effort to attract community agencies to coordinate efforts to change the learning experience of children who live in poverty and/or who experience ongoing acute crises.

The byword - achievement gap - has come to imply that failure to learn is the fault of a student, a teacher or a principal, or all of these. Opportunity to Learn implies that the community and the federal government have responsibilities to our children. If we could only minimize testing and maximize the opportunities for our children to have adequate food, health care, and teachers trained to listen as well as teach our children who live in poverty, we would turn around education in our country today.

Posted by Becky on 01/18/12  •  Permalink  •  Comments 0   •  

NCLB: The Death Star of American Education by Diane Ravich

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January 10, 2012 8:48 AM

Some thoughts about a momentous occasion: the 10th anniversary of No Child Left Behind, which occurred on January 8.

After 10 years of NCLB, we should have seen dramatic progress on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, but we have not. By now, we should be able to point to sharp reductions of the achievement gaps between children of different racial and ethnic groups and children from different income groups, but we cannot. As I said in a recent speech, many children continue to be left behind, and we know who those children are: They are the same children who were left behind 10 years ago.

Posted by Sue Kirby on 01/11/12  •  Permalink  •  Comments 0   •  

Working Economics: How will the market react to a supercommittee “failure?”

Posted November 15, 2011 at 3:25 pm by John Irons

As the deadline looms for the supercommittee to report back to Congress, some have raised the specter that “failure” would lead to a collapse in financial markets. For example, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry has expressed concerns that a failure to reach an agreement would send a dangerous signal to markets, and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has said that a “go big” agreement is needed to “reassure markets about our ability to repay our creditors.”

These concerns are misplaced.

Posted by Sue Kirby on 11/18/11  •  Permalink  •  Comments 0   •