PDK polls consistently show that parents give their children's schools high marks but are dissatisfied with the performance of public schools nationally. This paradox may be explained by the persistent narrative of failing public schools that has dominated media coverage in the past 50 years. Authors Mark Hlavacik and Jack Schneider tracked the…

Education leaders frequently turn to technological solutions to improve schools, often without evidence of their effectiveness. According to Victoria Cain and Adam Laats, this pattern of leaders pouring money into new technological systems and then being disappointed in the results goes back centuries. They describe how, in the early 1800s,…

Over the last two decades, federal and state policy makers have launched a number of ambitious, large-scale education reform initiatives--No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, the Common Core State Standards, and others--only to see them sputter and fail. In 2017, the authors convened a number of leading scholars to explore why those initiatives…

While the debate continues over whether to close failing schools or attempt fixing them, the author asserts that the solution most often lies in assigning strong leaders to them who will take definite and immediate action. Reviewing his own success turning around schools, he says creating a sense of urgency, unloading poor performing staff, and…

Although the human mind resists confusion, this feeling of disequilibrium nurtures learning. Newkirk, the author quotes, says intelligence is not a matter of being smart--it is the capacity to view difficulty as an opportunity to stop, reassess, and employ strategies for making sense of problems. These same habits of mind define reflection, a…

Why didn't China celebrate its stunning PISA performance? Why does Singapore blame its education for its inability to cultivate creative and entrepreneurial talents? Why don't the world's top scorers in international tests have the same level of entrepreneurial activities and capabilities? This essay uncovers the inconsistency between academic…

Re-examines the concept of academic failure and competition. Ideally, education should endeavor to find and develop each individual's strengths, rather than hammer away at academic weaknesses. Schools should help the individual master the basic skills for surviving and functioning well in society. Grades and competition do not further these goals.…

Identifies counterproductive grading policies and practices, such as varying grading scales; worshipping averages; using zeros indiscriminantly; following the assign, test, grade, and teach pattern; failing to match testing to teaching; ambushing students; grading first efforts; establishing inconsistent criteria; and failing to recognize…

Argues that the attempt to develop schools in which students do not fail has had the unintended side effect of decreasing learning progress and increasing tolerance for this lack of progress. Asserts that students who interfere with the learning of other students should not be kept in the schools. (Author/IRT)

Explains why school-based management fails or succeeds, based on research in 44 schools. SBM fails when principals advance their own agendas, decision-making power is too concentrated, and business proceeds as usual. Success requires teacher-led decision-making teams, continuous improvement, information sharing, staff rewards, facilitative…

Failure is inevitable and can be conducive to great learning and discovery. However, some failures exact too high a human cost to justify. All of this may sound like a contradiction: freedom to fail and avoidance of human cost at the same time. However, the crux of the matter is coming to understand how leadership supports failures in order to…

Playing "dumb" can earn students easier classes, lower expectations, reduced pressure, and individual attention. Schools can stop rewarding failure by making remedial classes difficult, backing up homework policies with unappealing alternatives, providing penalties for attendance violations, and deglamorizing alternatives to regular programs. (PGD)

Cites the failings of the National Institute of Education (NIE) and the reasons behind them, discusses the proper federal role in supporting educational research, and suggests developing alternative methods for providing leadership and funding so that the NIE can be abandoned. (PGD)

In this article, the author talks about his experience as an 11-year-old swimmer and shares the lessons he learned as a member of the swim team. In his experience as one of the slowest team members, he discovered that slow and steady does not win the race, and when the focus is only on achievement, one loses the value of failure. As an adult, he…

A post-mortem examination of the new social studies, its successes, and its failures. (Author/WD)