By Watson Scott Swail, President and CEO of Educational Policy Institute and EPI International The National Council on Education & the Economy, the organization led by Marc Tucker, released a series of new reports on Tuesday called What Does it Really Mean to be College and Career Ready? The reports, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and focusing on mathematics and English, explore what is … Continue reading How Much Mathematics is Enough?
By Watson Scott Swail, President and CEO of Educational Policy Institute and EPI International On May 20, The Texas State Board of Education voted to what some people have called “whitewashing” the history and social studies curriculum in the state to counterbalance “liberal-leaning academics.” Some of the changes debated included adding and deleting current political figures from third-grade social studies standards, dismissing the “socialist” United Migrant Workers, … Continue reading Leading by (a Bad) Example
By Watson Scott Swail, President and CEO of Educational Policy Institute This past week I was privileged to speak with the faculty and Board of Governors of Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. Fanshawe College is an example of a decades-old institution that has undergone massive growth in the new millennium. Today, Fanshawe serves 16,000 full-time students and approximately 30,000 part-time students. The campus is immaculate; state-of-the-art, … Continue reading (What) to Be, or What not to Be
By Watson Scott Swail, President and CEO of Educational Policy Institute and EPI International This week saw the passing of a giant in the teaching field—Jaime Escalante. Escalante was made famous, in part, by Washington Post writer Jay Mathews in the book Escalante: The Best Teacher in America. But more famous through the movie version of the book, Stand and Deliver, in 1988 featuring Edward James Olmos … Continue reading Stand and Deliver
By Watson Scott Swail, President and CEO of Educational Policy Institute and EPI International The conduct of public discourse in the United States worries me. Over the last few months, we’ve seen ugly, staged scenes of aggression and partisanship at health care public meetings; brutal disregard at the President’s speech to Congress; and the total politicization of the President’s Education Address to students. If those instances aren’t … Continue reading When Politics and Education Run Afoul
The Swail Letter on Higher Education 