Robert Oliphant - Dear Newsweek. . . . Like many of my fellow Americans, I grieve over the collapse of American journalism, but have never been able to explain why the Economist, a British weekly, has doubled in circulation during the last decade while our own Newsweek and Time keep sputtering and shrinking.

RiShawn Biddle – When you think about Microsoft, Apple, Google, Proctor & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive, you think about the leading corporations in their respective technology and consumer products markets.

Sonam Shahani – I argued, citing data that show the importance of engaging students in learning through hands-on approaches balanced with explicit instruction. These methods are taught in my university classes and witnessed in my student teaching placement classrooms. Teachers use activities, manipulatives, and real-world experiences to teach lessons. Textbook problems and worksheets are reserved for homework assignments.

Matthew Amaral – During the first week of school, I was doing a bunch of community building stuff- trying to convince my kids to love and fear me at the same time. This year I’ve really focused on getting them writing, no matter how, as long as they have a large body of work they can point to and say, “I did all that,” I’m pretty happy.

Tom Watkins – I am an old boxer. Every time I entered the ring, I assumed my opponent was capable of knocking me out. I never assumed that I was pre-ordained to be the victor, so I trained hard for all my fights. Can we honestly say we are prepared as a state and nation as we enter the second decade of the 21st century?

Joe Nathan – Courage, cooperation, conflict, creativity and change: those are five words I’d use to summarize public education in 2010. Considering those ideas may help make 2011 better for youngsters, educators, families and taxpayers.

Todd Farley – Like the maddeningly successful author Diane Ravitch, I, too, have changed my mind about No Child Left Behind. Unlike the estimable Ravitch, however — whose recent bestseller argues in exhausting detail against the very accountability measures that Ravitch long championed — in the great testing debate I've gone from "con" to "pro."

Ron Isaac – It may sound simplistic but it's really very simple. As public school educators we embrace children from all the world and they mean all the world to us. Our arms are open, our minds are open, our hearts are open, and, not being charters, all our schools are open to them. Without exception.

Ron Issac – "Hold on to your hats" because the Hoover Institution's Koret Task Force has just released its top 5 in the Best and Worst Education Events of 2010 categories.

Paul E. Peterson – According to early reactors who have voted in the Education Next poll of the best and worst in 2010 for American education, “Waiting for Superman” and the other recently released documentaries rank next to the stimulus package as among the worst things that have happened this year

Matthew Amaral – In today’s climate of high stakes testing, I haven’t heard too many people talking about the tests themselves. For example, who is making these tests, and what are some problems we’re having with them here at the ground level?

Ron Isaac – It’s too early to tell, but there are hopeful signs that the pall of Washington DC’s former schools chancellor Michelle Rhee’s reign may, like a bad hangover, be lifted and the residue of her despotic fiat-scarred regime wiped away like spilled hazardous waste.

Ron Isaac – Some ancient tribes developed an ingenious, convenient and fail-safe trick to avoid fantasized divine retribution for their self-supposed guilt. They diverted all responsibility and its dire consequences to a blameless proxy: goats.

I have just completed three videos for Teachers TV looking at key aspects of the recent education White Paper.

Robert Oliphant – Apart from getting drunk at the same bar, the prospects for Congressional togetherness are today surely bleaker than ever before, enough so to invite consideration of legislative targets, however bizarre, that might evoke consensual support from both Republicans and Democrats. Here are three candidates that might get through the walls of anger and mistrust that now separate our leaders.

John Jensen, Ph.D. – We might inquire why sharing doesn’t occur more automatically and universally.

Sonam Shahani – I am so frustrated. I chose teaching as a career knowing that it was difficult.

Beverly Eakman – The latest civil rights flap over groping and body scanning of Americans at the gloved hands of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is symptomatic of a much larger effort. It’s a push to see how much our nation’s lawmakers can get away with before the inevitable massive backlash kicks in.

Retired UK professor Marty Solomon's claim that “Most charter schools no better, worse than public ones” comes up short.

Matthew Amaral – “Teaching is not a profession.

Jim Stergios – Nowhere does public education’s intellectual fog envelope minds more obviously than when American educators think about how to improve the nation's academic standing in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Today’s Globe article makes it crystal clear that we are falling far short of the best countries and especially short of our global economic competitors.