From Public Agenda, a report on Teaching for a Living: How Teachers See the Profession Today. Who needs mathematicians for math, anyway? The ed schools' pedagogy adds up to trouble. Skewed perspective: What we know about teacher preparation at elite education schools. Grade the teachers: A way to improve schools, one instructor at a time. From CT, a review of Homeschool: An American History by Milton Gaither; a review of Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik by Chester E. Finn, Jr.; The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need — And What We Can Do About It by Tony Wagner; and The Street Stops Here: A Year at a Catholic High School in Harlem by Patrick McCloskey. From Education Review, a review of So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools by Charles Payne; and a review of Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life: Hip-Hop Pedagogy and the Politics of Identity by Marc Lamont Hill. Can separate be equal?: The classroom is where poor and middle-class kids should meet — to the benefit of both. Learning separately: Peter Meyer on the case for single-sex schools. Learning for a living: Liam Julian writes in defense of vocational ed. Sol Stern on E. D. Hirsch’s curriculum for democracy: A content-rich pedagogy makes better citizens and smarter kids. What Johnny needs to learn about Islam: Texas, Florida, and California revise their textbook standards. If you could create your own high-school curriculum, what would it look like? Robert McHenry on freshman, sophomore, junior and senior years.
