Common Core: Too Common for Our Kids

Common Core: Too Common for Our Kids

At the risk of sounding elitist, Massachusetts schools should not have to lower their exceptional education standards to be equal to other states. Alabama is a very nice place, but it does not necessarily share our educational requirements, especially if we hope to compete in the high tech and medical fields that attract students and […]

Shaky new standards for college readiness

  By: Sandra Stotsky – November, 2010 SPECIAL TO THE VALLEY PATRIOT “Dr. Ormsby is taking the month off to assess the existential meaning of the election results. He will return in December.” A mesmerizing phrase regularly rolls off the tongues of education experts these days. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan used it in a […]

Audit Shows North Andover School Committee Incompetence

PAYING ATTENTION! WITH TOM DUGGAN   By Tom Duggan, February, 2007 Maybe the North Andover School Committee really isn’t incompetent. Perhaps it is completely capable of running the schools efficiently and just refuses to do so. Whatever the case, an education audit released last month on the condition of the North Andover school system showed that […]

Common Sense School Reform

Frederick Hess, Beacon Hill Institute – June, 2004 (Guest Columnist)   A Measure of the Need for Reform America’s schools are in a state of crisis. Few of our schools are excellent, many are mediocre, and yet we, the adults responsible, are content to tinker and theorize. Demands for radical change are consistently met by protestations […]