Too Simple to Fail

How to improve the educational system.

by R. Barker Bausell

The Income-Achievement Disparity: New Study, Old Problem

A recent analysis conducted by Sean F. Reardon for the Russell Sage Foundation book entitled Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children's Life Chances deserves serious attention by anyone interested in either education or the 2012 presidential. Read More

Formulistic Press Coverage of School Reform

The print media is positioned to play a significant educational role in school reform but formulistic coverage of important issues severely limits its potential impact. Read More

Reforming Our Obsolete Testing System

Our current tests of school learning are as obsolete as the classroom model of instruction itself. Since we know what causes learning (instruction) and what should be taught in our schools (the curriculum), the assessment of school learning is hardly rocket science. Read More

Replacing the Obsolete Classroom with Digital Tutoring

The obsolete classroom is totally and woefully obsolete. The question is not if it will be replaced or by what, but when the migration to digital instruction will occur and individual teachers will no longer be forced to prepare lessons nor allowed to make major grading, progression, and curricular decisions. Read More

Value-Added Teacher Assessment vs. Instructional Time

What are the implications for the time-on-task principle (the only way to increase school learning is to increase the amount of relevant instruction delivered) for value-added teacher assessment: the educational reform proposal so beloved of luminaries from Barack Obama to Bill Gates? Read More

The Single Simple Principle of School Learning

All efforts at school reform have ultimately ended in disappointment. These repeated failures may be due in part to academic educators' attempts to disguise the profound simplicity of their discipline by imbuing it with a false complexity that has served to conceal the only intervention capable of increasing school learning. Read More