Valerie Strauss
Valerie Strauss writes the Answer Sheet blog for the Washington Post.
Articles by this author
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Views Monday, April 19, 2021 A Former Lobbyist Explains How the Privatization Movement Is Trying to End Public Education A few years ago I ran a piece by Joanne Barkan about the long history of the movement to privatize public education. It began: When champions of market-based reform in the United States look at public education, they see two separate activities—government funding education and government running... Read more |
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Views Monday, August 13, 2018 Arne Duncan Never Learns Arne Duncan never seems to learn. Duncan, who served as President Barack Obama’s education secretary for seven years and was more powerful than any of his predecessors, is hitting the interview and lecture circuit to promote his new book, “ How Schools Work: An Inside Account of Failure and Success... Read more |
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Views Monday, July 30, 2018 No, Private Schools Aren’t Better at Educating Kids Than Public Schools. Why This New Study Matters Despite evidence showing otherwise, it remains conventional wisdom in many parts of the education world that private schools do a better job of educating students, with superior standardized test scores and outcomes. It is one of the claims that some supporters of school choice make in arguing that... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, September 06, 2017 Remember When Betsy DeVos Said ‘Dreamers’ Shouldn’t Worry About The Trump Administration? There’s been a lot of reaction from within the world of education to the Trump administration’s decision to end the federal program that allows younger undocumented immigrants, known as “dreamers,” to live in the United States without fear of being deported — and just about all of it has been... Read more |
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Views Sunday, July 23, 2017 Florida’s Education System—the one Betsy DeVos Cites as a Model—Is in Chaos The K-12 education system in Florida — the one that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos likes to praise as a model for the nation — is in chaos. Traditional public school districts are trying to absorb the loss of millions of dollars for the new school year that starts within weeks. That money, which... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, February 02, 2016 How Do States Support Their Public Schools? Badly, A New 50-state Report Card Shows. How do the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia support their public schools? Badly, according to a new report card (see in full below) which evaluates their performance on six key criteria and finds all of them wanting. The best overall grade is a C, with most states earning D’s or F’s. The... Read more |
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Views Thursday, October 08, 2015 How a Billionaire is Trying to Control Los Angeles Public Schools Eli Broad is a housing and insurance tycoon whose California-based Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation has poured hundreds of millions into “transforming” K-12 urban education by training administrators and supporting charter schools, merit pay and other market-based reforms. And now, Broad wants to do... Read more |
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Views Thursday, July 09, 2015 What Should — and Should Not — Be Written Into a New US Education Law Both the U.S. House and Senate are now — eight years late — debating this week how to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, known in its current form as No Child Left Behind. Signed into law in 2002, NCLB was supposed to have been rewritten by Congress in 2007, but sheer negligence... Read more |
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Views Monday, March 30, 2015 Report: Big Education Firms Spend Millions Lobbying for Pro-Testing Policies The four corporations that dominate the U.S. standardized testing market spend millions of dollars lobbying state and federal officials — as well as sometimes hiring them — to persuade them to favor policies that include mandated student assessments, helping to fuel a nearly $2 billion annual... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, January 14, 2015 What Are These Civil Rights Groups Thinking? What are all these civil rights and advocacy groups thinking? Nineteen organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the United Negro College Fund, just issued a joint statement (see text and full list of signatories below) about what they would like to see in a newly written No... Read more |