On the need for more teachers in school ...

More here
(ht)
Really???

"Failure is not an option." well, it is.

We have reshaped the education system—largely through federal legislation—to an approach of "right answers, right answers, right answers." But life's not like that. We're putting a tremendous amount of value on being able to pick the right one out of four little bubbles. But this turns out not to be a very valuable skill. You can't take this skill out into the workplace and get paid for it.
My research assistant did a blog for the Washington Post about this mantra of "Failure Is Not an Option." Her point was, you can't learn anything unless you fail. Failure has to be an option. What does success mean if there's no failure? It just means that you've dropped the bar so low that everyone can walk over it.

That is Diane Ravitch speaking of her Damascene conversion of sorts on public education and No Child Left Behind.  I am reminded of Robert McNamara admitting much later in life about how wrong he was on the Vietnam War.
Finally, ...

If you could hear someone else interviewed about wrongness, who would it be?
That's a hard one. Donald Rumsfeld said he was wrong, but I don't even want to hear from him. [Former Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs Co-Chair, and former Citigroup Chair] Bob Rubin would be interesting, but he'll never admit he was wrong. Right now what's coming to mind are people who have never admitted that they're wrong about anything.
Like who?
Like basically everybody I've been associated with for the last 20 years.

No Test Left Behind :)

Saving the public universities

Public universities have been forced to raise tuition largely because state governments, facing huge budget shortfalls, have reduced spending on higher education. But many education experts said colleges must do a better job of cutting costs.
“Colleges need to be looking for ways to permanently restructure, not just cut their budgets,” said Jane Wellman, executive director of the Delta Project on Postsecondary Costs, Productivity and Accountability. “A perfect example is furloughs, in hopes that eventually the work force can come back. But this isn’t a one-time problem, and eventually they’ll have to bite the bullet and reduce their work force.”

Read the entire NY Times story

Sir Charles speaks his mind. Barkley, that is!

[CNN's Campbell Brown]: So are you going to run for governor?
Barkley: I plan on it in 2014.
Brown: You are serious.
Barkley: I am, I can't screw up Alabama.
Brown: There is no place to go but up in your view?
Barkley: We are number 48 in everything and Arkansas and Mississippi aren't going anywhere.
Brown: And the top priority for you would be education?
Barkley: All the way education, the public school system in this country is the worst it has ever been and what that does is that hurts crime, it hurts the judicial system. You know if you don't give people education and hope, they become criminals. They get involved in drugs. So we have got to fix the public school system. I think we need to make these neighborhoods safer. And the third thing, you have got to give people economic opportunity. America for far too long has a small group of people who have got all the money and then we got a bunch of poor people who have no money. And because we have killed the public school system they can't get the education to make money and that is just not right.

Watch the interview, if you would rather believe your own eyes :-)