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Structures & Schools

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Will Rahm Emanuel’s Merit-pay System Work Where Others Haven’t? Last week, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that he’s rolling out a merit pay program specifically for school principals, using $5 million in donated funds.

Will Rahm Emanuel’s Merit-pay System Work Where Others Haven’t?

The plan is particularly bold considering its announcement comes on the heels of quite a bit of evidence, from research to scandals, showing the faults of merit pay. In March, we wrote about Harvard economist Roland Fryer‘s study on New York City’s failed merit pay experiment, the Schoolwide Performance Bonus Program, which was shutdown last month. Privatiser l'école en France? Pas tout à fait une fiction. How I Would Unschool My Kids Altucher Confidential. Posted by James Altucher My dad hit me when I got bad grades. Particularly when I was young and got a bad grade in “Conduct”. Happiness was an “A”. Even better: an “A+”. Sadness was an “F”. These 2 Maps About Student Loans Explode One of the Biggest Myths About Student Loans. One of the nuances that often gets lost in discussions about student debt is that the biggest borrowers aren't necessarily the riskiest borrowers.

These 2 Maps About Student Loans Explode One of the Biggest Myths About Student Loans

There are many people who take out modest loans but have trouble paying them back, either because they fail to graduate or because their degree doesn't open many doors in the job market. A statistical case-in-point: According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 17 percent of all student borrowers are 90 days delinquent on their payments, yet only 11.2 percent of all loan balances are that far behind. That gap suggests there are lots of small-time debtors in trouble these days. Looking at the geography of student borrowing teaches us a similar lesson. As part of its most recent report on household credit, the NY Fed has produced a neat pair of maps detailing which states have the highest education debt burdens and which have highest delinquency rates.

Democratic Education Empowers Youth to Become Independent & Conscientious Citizens. Ken Robinson: 10 talks on education. Ken Robinson: How to escape education's death valley. What rankings don't tell you about university excellence. Autumn is the season for university rankings.

What rankings don't tell you about university excellence

We’ve already had the the Academic Ranking of World Universities, produced in Shanghai, the QS ranking and the Leiden Ranking. Now the Times Higher Education Rankings have got universities in a spin once again. Welcome to CollegeMeasures.org - CollegeMeasures.org. The problem with justifying college involves cost. In “Telling the Right Story,” Dean Dad notes that higher education has had a series of real or perceived crises, around hippies / protests, diversity / multiculturalism, and, as he says, the latest set are “about cost.”

The problem with justifying college involves cost

Is College Worth It? Each dot represents a different college.

Is College Worth It?

You can search for a college by name or hover over a dot for more information. Data source: Payscale. America’s colleges and universities are enduring a crisis of faith among the public. As we wrote last week in The Supersizing of American Colleges, due to a subsidy-fueled spending spree, the cost of college has increased over the past 30 years faster than the price of healthcare, housing, or just about anything else. Les élites sacrifient la langue française, par Gaston Pellet. Depuis qu’existent les relations entre peuples, les penseurs, gens de lettres et savants se sont heurtés au problème de la langue.

Les élites sacrifient la langue française, par Gaston Pellet

En Europe, pour surmonter la difficulté, ils avaient adopté le latin. Langue ancienne complexe, elle présentait l’avantage d’exprimer toute la finesse d’une pensée, mais le grand inconvénient d’être réservée à l’élite. Le français, d’abord utilisé comme langue de prestige par l’aristocratie européenne, s’imposa au XIXe siècle comme une langue coloniale, au détriment des langues et idiomes locaux, dont beaucoup ont disparu ou sont en voie de disparition. Par un curieux retour des choses, la langue française serait-elle en passe de subir le même sort ? Son envahissement par ce qu’on appelle désormais le « tout-anglais » est suffisamment visible pour qu’on s’interroge.

Dans son Dictionnaire amoureux des langues (Plon, 2009), le linguiste Claude Hagège consacre un chapitre aux langues en danger, dans lequel il inclut le français. Vous êtes abonné(e) ? The Race for Elite Private Schools. Over the last decade, tuition costs and competition for slots at elite private schools in the United States have increased substantially, even as online courses from sources like the Khan Academy became free for children in the K-12 age range and information has become more accessible than ever before, to more people than ever before.

The Race for Elite Private Schools

New-look GCSE league tables reconfirm wide disparities between schools. In 2016 the Department for Education (DfE) will radically overhaul their school league tables and replace their five A* to Cs grades measure with a new approach measuring results across pupils' best eight subjects.

New-look GCSE league tables reconfirm wide disparities between schools

» The End of Higher Education’s Golden Age Clay Shirky. Interest in using the internet to slash the price of higher education is being driven in part by hope for new methods of teaching, but also by frustration with the existing system.

» The End of Higher Education’s Golden Age Clay Shirky

The biggest threat those of us working in colleges and universities face isn’t video lectures or online tests. It’s the fact that we live in institutions perfectly adapted to an environment that no longer exists. In the first half of the 20th century, higher education was a luxury and a rarity in the U.S. In Norway, all library books must be digitized. Why is Singapore's school system so successful, and is it a model for the West? For more than a decade, Singapore, along with South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Finland, has been at or near the top of international leagues tables that measure children’s ability in reading, maths and science.

Why is Singapore's school system so successful, and is it a model for the West?

This has led to a considerable sense of achievement in Finland and East Asia and endless hand-wringing and head-scratching in the West. What then do Singaporean teachers do in classrooms that is so special, bearing in mind that there are substantial differences in classroom practices between – as well as within – the top-performing countries? What are the particular strengths of Singapore’s instructional regime that helps it perform so well? La bonne idée pour l'école qu'on ne verra pas en France: un tronc commun primaire-collège.