World News Center
Get a job, or go to grad school?
July 27, 2010Dear Annie: I hope you can settle an argument. My parents are saying that with my college major (English), it will probably be hard for me to find a job when I graduate next spring. They want me to go straight to grad school and get a master's degree, which they say will make me more "marketable." (They are willing to foot the bill, which I do appreciate.)
JAY MATHEWS
July 26, 2010The weekly Jay Mathews education column is on break for a few weeks. But it'll be back next month when school starts.
D.C. school system fires 241 teachers
July 24, 2010The District of Columbia public school system announced Friday that it is letting 226 employees go for poor performance under the education assessment system IMPACT.
Arrests highlight education busing issues
July 23, 2010The arrest of 19 protesters at a rancorous school board meeting Tuesday brings the issue of busing and diversity in education into the national spotlight.
Books at home push kids toward more schooling
July 22, 2010My wife's parents did not go to college. Linda's father was a carpenter. Her mother was an aircraft assembly line worker. They grew up in Oklahoma farming families, married, moved to Southern California and raised their children in blue-collar neighborhoods full of families just like theirs.
Books at home push kids toward more schooling
July 22, 2010My wife's parents did not go to college. Linda's father was a carpenter. Her mother was an aircraft assembly line worker. They grew up in Oklahoma farming families, married, moved to Southern California and raised their children in blue-collar neighborhoods full of families just like theirs.
Long papers in high school? Many college freshmen say they never had to do one.
July 20, 2010Kate Simpson is a full-time English professor at the Middletown, Va., campus of Lord Fairfax Community College. She saw my column about Prince George's County history teacher Doris Burton lamenting the decline of research skills in high school, as changing state and local course requirements and grading difficulties made required long essays a thing of the past.
Better data needed to accurately rate school systems
July 20, 2010Educational statistics expert Joseph Hawkins, one of my guides to the mysteries of test assessment, is impatient with the way the Montgomery County public school system is, as he puts it, "always telling the world how much better it is than everyone else." He finds flaws in its latest celebration of college success by county graduates, particularly minorities.
Results of D.C. principal's controversial methods need to outweigh criticism
July 13, 2010Dwan Jordon, more quickly than any principal I have ever known, has made a name for himself in D.C. public schools.
Are hospitals deadlier in July?
July 9, 2010More than 16,000 U.S. medical school graduates are awarded M.D. degrees each year, and many enter their residency programs at teaching hospitals in July. Now, a growing body of research suggests that month might be a more deadly time in U.S. hospitals.
