Ignition for Education

  • Group Work: A Check on the Research

    In a previous post, I commented on the tendency of educators to say that an approach is “research based.” I wrote, “I’ve come to suspect that [the research] may sometimes be of low quality or exist only in rumor.” I committed to not believing such claims until I had conducted my own systematic check on…

  • Education, Egalitarianism, and Elitism: Why Kamala Harris is the Better Candidate for Education

    Education is not the issue on which the current US presidential election is being fought. The Issues page of Donald Trump’s campaign website does not include a section on education. The Issues page on Kamala Harris’s has a short section that mostly focusses on funding and debt relief for higher education. This isn’t surprising. After…

  • Yes, Some Students Should Fail. And No, We Should Not Give Up on Them.

    In my last post, I encouraged readers to read an article in The Economist which argued that the rise in high school graduation rates is merely that–a rise in the number of student who graduate. It does not represent an increase in educational achievement. In fact, it represents the opposite–the dumbing down of standards to…