Jim McLaughlin's Blog

Timeless Stories for My Brain and Yours

Blog

  • Continued Majority Support for Death Penalty – Pew Research Center

    Public opinion about the death penalty has changed only modestly in recent years, but there continues to be far less support for the death penalty than there was in the mid-1990s. via Continued Majority Support for Death Penalty – Pew Research Center. Read more

  • Top 10 U.S. Government Investments in 20th Century American Competitiveness

    As the Commerce Department report released today confirms, to position ourselves for sustainable economic growth, we have to keep focusing on the engines of that growth. Our people, our infrastructure, and our innovation are critical to America’s formula for success. When the American people invested in our competitiveness in the 20th century, it paid huge… Read more

  • 4 Characteristics of Education Programs That Actually Work | Getting Smart

    Education is a huge conversation, but almost all of the conversation is about education problems. There is not a serious or mature conversation about solutions. Meanwhile, lots of resources and attention are going into an ever-changing, wide variety of programs it is hoped will be part of some solution. How do we know when we’re… Read more

  • NCLB’s Lost Decade Report | FairTest

    The federal No Child Left Behind NCLB law failed badly in terms of its own goals, leading to a decade of educational stagnation, according to FairTest’s report marking NCLB’s tenth anniversary. Among the report’s major findings: NCLB failed to significantly increase average academic performance or to significantly narrow achievement gaps, as measured by the NAEP.… Read more

  • Harvard Education Letter

    But just as online learning is taking off, new research is finding that it may not be the most effective way to teach children, and virtual companies have begun to see that a purely virtual approach has its limits. A key report put out by the U.S. Department of Education in September 2010 demonstrated that… Read more

  • 7 key questions to ask about ed technology, online learning – The Answer Sheet – The Washington Post

    The outcry against exploitative online for-profit education is growing at roughly the same rate as the clamor for increasing amounts of educational technology — laptops, tablets, smart boards — from preschool to life-long learning. Unfortunately, a lot of the conversation is sliding into the “pro” and “con” mode of contemporary punditry. What we most need… Read more