DEAR FELLOW NON-“REFORMERS”:
I have serious concerns about the current direction of education reform in this country. And I am not alone. Yet I think many of us who try and express these concerns feel like we are small voices outside of what has become an echo chamber of reform rhetoric. Money, relationships and opinions inside of this echo chamber have become increasingly insular over the last fifteen years. The end result is a self-proclaimed “Education Reform” community that comes across as self-righteously willing to dismiss the concerns of those of us who are not part of the inner circle. This reform community includes foundations; government agencies at the federal, state and district level; schools and advocacy organizations that hire and work primarily with people who “share...
Education
Dear Montgomery County Board of Education Members:Susan Burkinshaw
Abuse thrives in secrecy – in 2012 the Maryland State Board of Ed directed you to take concrete steps to protect children in schools. Your response was silence.
In September of 2014, MCPS, under the direction of Dr. Joshua Starr, began to respond to media attention to “isolated” incidents of child sexual abuse at Baker and Clemente. Since then, dozens of cases have been publicized that had previously been mishandled. We all know now that these incidents are not isolated. There is a systemic problem in MCPS and there should be accountability for the travesties committed against children in our schools.
As a parent volunteer on this workgroup/advisory group, there has been selective transparency – we are still...
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Dear Professor Putnam,
I write as a long-time fan on the right who shares your deep concerns about our county splintering along class lines. I’ve written two books about it in recent years, From Family Collapse to America’s Decline: The Educational, Economic, and Social Costs of Family Fragmentation (2011) and Broken Bonds: What Family Fragmentation Means for America’s Future (2014).
The immediate reason for this note, in addition to thanking you for Our Kids, is to respectfully take issue with your comments about school choice at the Fordham Institute last week, which I just watched on Fordham’s website. I would argue that enabling more poor children to attend religiously animated schools, via vouchers or tax credits, can play a much more beneficial role in their lives than you...
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Dear Shri Narendra Modi,
For a country of 1.3 billion people, the biggest resource is human resource. You have yourself acknowledged our human resource potential in Japan. However, successive governments have lacked the will, intent and vision as regards to the most important ministry that can decide the future of India – the human resource development ministry. Barring empty slogans, there is zero initiative on how we can make India’s youth more productive. We are looking at our demographic dividend turning into a demographic nightmare if we don’t change our attitude towards the HRD ministry and education.
The tragedy lies in how everything to do with education has been split and each ministry has taken a piece for itself to control, govern, eat, fleece and reap. The objective has...
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Dear College Dropout Factories,
As part of our quest to increase the public demand for greater accountability in higher education, The Education Trust has continued our commitment to identifying four-year colleges and universities that fail to graduate the vast majority of their students in a timely fashion. Roughly 95 percent of all other four-year institutions have higher graduation rates than you do. This year, 113 institutions made the list of college dropout factories, 65 of which were on this same list last year.
You appear on this list if your institution:
was eligible to receive student federal financial aid (Title IV funds),
enrolled at least 30 freshmen that began their studies as full-time students in the fall of 2007, and
had a 2013 six-year graduation rate below 18...
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An Open Letter to the Governor of West Bengal,
Dear Mr M K Narayanan
Being the Chancellor of all the State Universities of West Bengal you are empowered by the West Bengal University Laws (Amendment) Ordinance, 2011 to remove any Vice-Chancellor if you are convinced that a Vice-Chancellor has abused or misused the powers vested in him or if the continuance in the office of the Vice-Chancellor is detrimental to the interest of the university. The new law has given you the power to show cause a Vice-Chancellor to provide him a reasonable opportunity to defend his case. You can also remove a Vice-Chancellor if evidence of gross financial irregularity is found to have been committed by him.
But what you would do to a Vice-Chancellor who had abused power and committed gross financial...
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Dear DU Examination Committee,
I love the concept of exams. It’s like: We don’t think you have enough things troubling you at this very formative juncture in your life when you’re a teen or a tween, lost and struggling, so we’ll just pile up a very dysfunctional and obsolete system of evaluating whether you deserve to get ahead in your life or not, based purely on your ability to cram, retain and reproduce. Thank you very much.
I started off this semester thinking there will be enough time to acquaint myself with the course. I had opted for a course that was fairly new to me.
Ideal Assumption: I will enjoy the curriculum and pace up with the other students, and now that I am finally studying something I love, I will excel at it.
Reality: The teachers rush to finish off with...
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Dear Mr. Page,
We are writing to you on behalf of a group of over 100 student leaders from around the country to express our support for Paul Polak's ambitious challenge to Google to help end poverty.
We are the University Innovation Fellows. We believe that poverty can be ended, and we are thrilled with the opportunity that Mr. Polak has presented you. By taking on this challenge, Google can help change the lives of over 100 million people, and can inspire millions more to address one of the world's greatest challenges in a revolutionary way.
We do believe, though, that time is of the essence. By responding to this moonshot challenge now, Google can bring a spirit of optimism to the global community and spur a grassroots movement of innovation that spreads around the world. Too...
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Dear Professor Giora
Re. Open letter by “BOYCOTT!” to CRH plc management
I refer to the open letter to which you subscribed, addressed by BOYCOTT! (Supporting the Palestinian call for BDS from within), to the management of the Irish public limited company, CRH, urging it to divest from Israeli cement company Nesher.
Since you signed as a professor, I fear that the shallow unsubstantiated arguments presented in BOYCOTT’s political appeal are unworthy of the rigorous academic standards one is entitled to expect of the university you represent.
BOYCOTT’s letter to CRH not only lacks rational argumentation, it employs highly emotive inaccurate language hardly appropriate from an academic. The title professor conveys a false sense in the mind of the reader that the material is...
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Dear Chancellor Gallagher:
I hope this letter finds you well. I am writing today as a concerned alumna of the University of Pittsburgh. Recent news has made me aware of our university’s resolute failure to provide a safe and welcoming environment for its transgender students, faculty, and staff. This failure is symbolized by the Johnstown campus’s 2012 expulsion of Seamus Johnston, the subsequent announcement of a policy that forbids many trans students from using sex-segregated facilities that match their gender, and your administration’s April response to the ruling in Johnston vs. The University of Pittsburgh, in which you disingenuously asserted that it was “never [y]our intent to violate anyone’s rights.”
Our university’s actions have been reckless and wrong. My studies in...
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