American University has a story about a dinosaur camp in Hyattsville, Maryland. This is just incredibly cool. The camp is taught by a paleontologist which gives you an indication that there will be some real learning. While calculating how long and burdensome it would be to send my kids to…
Historically, there has not been a lot of honest assessment about the quality of our school teachers in Maryland. It is too sensitive, too subjective, etc. But times are changing. Why? Because kids in too many other countries – China comes to mind – are outperforming us by whopping margins.…
It is so easy to find “best of” lists of just about anything now. But Google “Best Private Schools in Maryland.” What you come up with is laundry list of school but no analysis of the best test scores, user rankings of the top schools, pretty much nothing. What you…
WBAL writes an article about three disciplinary incidents at Maryland schools: At Western High School in Baltimore, school official canceled the school’s Senior Banquet and Senior Farewell and a series of pranks escalated to poisoning the drinking water with unknown medication and substances. ( Poisoning is probably hyperbole but you…
“American eighth-graders score 66 points below their Japanese counterparts in math, yet almost 40 percent of American children think they’re good in math. That figure for Japan is 4 percent. “This comes from an editorial by Richard Cohen in the Washington Post. He’s mixing together studies and does not explain…
Everyone agrees something has to be done about deficit spending. The question is what taxes (if any) should be increased and what budget items do we have to cut back if we conclude that taxes are not the only answer. Lansdowne High School has an opinion. Landsdowne has survived and…
Maryland’s legislature passed Senate Bill 985 this week which tightens the screws a bit on for-profit colleges by tightening regulation of these institutions. Governor O’Malley supports the bill and is expected to sign it soon. Where are the feds on this? The for-profit college industry doubled spending on lobbying this…
Maryland State Superintendent of Schools Nancy Grasmick, the longest-serving appointed head of state schools in the country, announced yesterday that she is retiring after 20 years. Good for her. And she probably did a great job (I’m in no position to access). I don’t like parsing the words of someone…