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Education Policy

To Truly Fix U.S. Education, Start Outside the Classroom

  Frustrated by rising costs and stagnant achievement levels on standardized tests, American politicians and media-savvy education reformers have over the past several years pushed for a complete overhaul of this country’s public school system. The ways their frustration has been vented – from demonizing teacher unions to implementing punitive policies that look to evaluate […]

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Education Policy

Keeping Schools Out of the OR

  As Texas legislators and education officials are scrambling to find ways to reduce school spending, a few of the politically savvy ones are spinning the budget crisis as a means to “reinvent public education in Texas.” However, the cost-saving measures they are proposing are simply more strongly-worded versions of the same complaints we’ve heard […]

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Education Policy

Is This New Wave of Educational Philanthropy Really Helping Anything?

For as long as there has been a public education system, there have been wealthy families that have ignored it, opting instead for expensive private schools. But lately, wealthy Americans have stopped turning their noses up at public education and are doing something that is pretty remarkable: They’re investing in it. Microsoft founder Bill Gates […]

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Education Policy

Democratizing Schools: Restorative Justice in the Face of Zero Tolerance

You might well have heard of public school environments as places of "zero tolerance," authoritarian in nature, and even comparable to jails or correctional facilities in terms of their disciplinary measures. Tardiness results in an entire lesson missed sitting in study hall; disrupting class earns a whole day of detention; rough-housing might lead to suspension, […]