Alan Haskvitz – More lucrative occupations, cutbacks in salaries, fear of harassment charges, and possible parent bias against them are driving men from the K-12 teaching field. But the unseen culprit in this demise could be seniority.

“Dear Ms. Rogers, I just finished your chapter on curriculum. It feels like you and I have traveled the same road, bumping our heads against the same barriers. We just happen to be on opposite sides of the state. …

Robert J. Samuelson | American competitiveness must be fixed outside the classroom. Almost everyone who worries about America's "competitiveness" in the world bemoans the sorry state of U.S. K-12 education. The Chinese and others do better. We need to catch up. From President Obama to CEOs, the refrain is to "fix the schools," almost as if it were an engineering problem.

Paul E. Peterson – When it comes to education, teacher unions—and their left-leaning allies—are never wrong, no, never, nevermore. Any assiduous reader of the New York Times—if only that and nothing more—would so conclude.

Joe Nathan – For generations, many Minnesota farmers have been members of a co-op. Now that idea is being applied, with encouraging impact, to public school teachers. That’s a central message of a recent report, “Can Teachers Run their Own Schools? Tales from the Islands of Teacher Cooperatives”

As the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville’s 21st Century Chair in Teacher Quality, Sandra Stotsky is a major figure in U.S. education reform. In private life, she’s a loving mother of five and gra

Frederick Hess – The rankings are now bigger and badder than ever (or at least bigger and badder than they were on Tuesday), with 35 additional scholars rated.

Ashley Thorne – The winter issue of Academic Questions looks at the ways pop culture affects higher education today. Are we on the verge of a culture shift? If so, what role will the ivory tower play? Or should the academy remain separate from popular culture?

Peter Wood – Does the Academic Bill of Rights amount to affirmative action for conservative faculty or is it an appeal to colleges and universities to end discrimination on the basis of political views?

Gail Heriot – All across the country, high school seniors are gearing up to apply to college. Many of them assume that the best thing they can do to ensure a bright future is to attend the most prestigious school that has accepted them — even if their race, athletic prowess or rich uncle helped them get in.

Mike Baker – 2010 was the year the spending axe fell and the students took to the streets. For some it was their "annus horribilis". For others, it was an overdue correction to centralised control and unaffordable spending. It was an extraordinary year that started quietly, but ended with violent protest and the hasty dismantling of familiar parts of the education landscape.

Robert McNergney – He asked excitedly after class if I had read Michael Lewis’s baseball classic Moneyball—the story of the Oakland A’s, their manager Billy Beane, and the dawn of “small ball.” The curious doctoral student was convinced that what I had said about teaching and learning could best be understood by Lewis’s view of baseball

Peter Meyer – Our public schools face a “fiscal tsunami” that will change our public education system for years to come.

Alan J. Borsuk – Charles Moore says his job is like creating a garden where teachers and students grow. “It’s more than just strong instructional leadership,” says Moore, principal of Eastbrook Academy, a private school at 5375 N. Green Bay Ave. It’s more than just overseeing discipline or budgets or schedules or a host of other aspects of a [...]

Bill Costello, M.Ed – American students are lagging significantly behind their peers from several countries in Europe and Asia according to new results from a key international assessment. They are the furthest behind students from the Chinese city of Shanghai, who received the top international test scores in math, science, and reading.

Steve Balch – John K. Wilson has posted a lengthy rebuttal to the article Ashley Thorne and I published on our website December 15th about the decision of Penn State’s Faculty Senate to revise its statement on academic freedom, removing provisions that tracked the language of the founding document of the AAUP, the 1915 Declaration of Principles.

Tom Watkins – China is exporting more than cheap “stuff” to America. The Chinese are sending us their most prized possession: their children.

Arne Duncan – U.S. students now compete throughout their careers with their peers in other countries. But thinking of the future as a contest among countries vying to get larger pieces of a finite economic pie is a recipe for protectionism and global strife. Instead, Americans must realize that expanding educational attainment everywhere is the best way to grow the pie for all.

Robert Oliphant – It was with superb timing that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan chose Pearl Harbor Day (Dec. 7) to hit American taxpayers with an implicit plea for Mo Money backed up with testing data indicating that American students now rank 14th in reading worldwide.

Robert Oliphant – LexTesting® is an original process developed by Robert Oliphant (PhD, Stanford, 1962,, in Old English lexicography under Herbert Dean Meritt). The process converts dictionary-entry materials into authoritative, open-access vocabulary questions. Here, informally considered, are its key features.

Steve Gunn – United Federation of Teachers goes to court to defend the failing school next door. NEW YORK – Does anyone, besides U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, really believe school employee unions are on board with the effort to reform and improve American schools?