World News Center
Jay Mathews: Looking Beyond the Numbers for Progress
March 13, 2010 On July 11, Brian Betts, principal of the District's Shaw Middle School at Garnet-Patterson, was at Dulles International Airport about to leave for a vacation in Spain. He was feeling good. His first year running a school whose students struggle with poverty and neighborhood strife had gone well, he thought. Quarterly test results were encouraging. Attendance was up. Parents were happy. Some of his staff had gone so far as to enroll their children at Shaw.
Class Struggle: 10 Ways to Pick the Right Public School District
March 13, 2010We say we are buying a house. But for most of us parents, the house is not the whole story. It is the local public school we are investing in, and sometimes it can be a very daunting financial and personal decision.
Jay Mathews: Elite Colleges Don't Make Elite People
March 13, 2010I promised a high school counselor in California I would update a very old online column whose printout on her wall is too faded to read. It asked a question I think students immersed in college visiting and application writing should consider: Where did your heroes go to college?
Today's Class Struggle
March 13, 2010This Class Struggle RSS subscription has changed. To continue getting Class Struggle by Jay Mathews visit washingtonpost.com/class-struggle.
Banging on the PK-16 Pipeline
March 13, 2010 Looking for this week's Class Struggle? You can find it on Jay's new blog at washingtonpost.com/class-struggle.
Perspective is needed on school budget-cut fears
March 13, 2010You saw the big headline on the front of our Metro section recently: "Deep budget cuts approved for Prince George's schools." The news from Northern Virginia was much the same: "Fairfax County schools chief proposes dramatic budget cuts" and "Proposed Arlington schools budget cuts back in many areas."
Jay Mathews: Nonfiction books for schools' consideration
March 13, 2010Buried in the avalanche of e-mails and comments I received after my column that begged for more nonfiction books in school, I found a note from one of my favorite educators, Dan McMahon, principal of DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville. In an English class he teaches, McMahon had assigned "The Dragons of Eden" by Carl Sagan and "Black Boy" by Richard Wright, so I hoped for more good suggestions.
Charles Sylvester dies at 75, American diplomat helped open relations with China
March 13, 2010Charles Sylvester, 75, the fourth generation of an American family immersed in Chinese history and a key diplomat in Beijing after the death of Chairman Mao Zedong, died Feb. 7 at his home in Hereford, Ariz. He had lung cancer.
Who's afraid of the big bad charter schools? Not St. Mary's.
March 13, 2010 Zina McGowan-Thomas, the energetic public information officer for St. Mary's County public schools, sends me many announcements and news releases that I am tempted to delete, as I do most e-mails from school districts. I know this is a bad idea, because sometimes you will find, in the smallest bulletin, something astonishing, such as the e-mail she sent me a few weeks ago about the Chesapeake Public Charter School.
D.C. teacher evaluation system has its fans in classrooms
March 13, 2010George Parker, president of the Washington Teachers Union, told me last year that the District's new evaluation program had no "appropriate system of support to improve instruction" and was "bad for kids." He suggested I contact more teachers to learn the many flaws of IMPACT, the program's name.
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