3) Keep All the Top Teachers - OpEd by Michelle Rhee, Sunday (Jan 22) - NYT
(toward the end) - In his State of the Union address, President Obama should call for a federal law that would require states to help parents ascertain whether their children are getting the high-quality instruction they need to prepare for college and the work force. Parents who find that their children are not being taught by an effective teacher in a successful school should have the right to vote with their feet by choosing a different school.
Now that 12 of the 50 states have laws that allow school administrators to consider teacher effectiveness in making layoff decisions, one in four children in America stand to benefit. President Obama must make an all-out effort to help the other three.

4) Does College Make You Smarter - OpEd Debate, Mon (Jan 24) - NYT
A recent book titled "Academically Adrift," claims that 45 percent of the nation's undergraduates learn very little in their first two years of college.
The study, by two sociologists, Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia, also found that half of the students surveyed did not take any classes requiring 20 pages of writing in their prior semester, and one-third did not take any courses requiring 40 pages of reading a week.
The research has come in for some criticism. But a larger question is: Have colleges, in their efforts to keep graduation rates high and students happy, dumbed down their curriculums?

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