This Week in GOOD Education

There was some interesting ground to cover this week in education news. Most of all, though, we were delighted to see even more participation from you, our brainy readers.

The biggest discussion of the week followed Nikhil's post about "the fact that properly trained and certified teachers do not necessarily make for students who see improvement in their test scores." Why is that? We asked, and you answered. An opinion piece by none other than Education Secretary Arne Duncan also garnered some discussion. He looked at why we don't value teachers, and called the way we train/reward/prepare them outdated. Are unions partly to blame?

We also looked at some innovation in education: There was Segway inventor Dean Kamen's robot program, which had us wishing we were kids again, the awesome online tutoring from a former financial whiz, and a new study looking at how to spark big ideas in academic research.

Finally, we asked you if colleges should force a 50-50 gender split in their admissions, despite there being more (and often better) females applying.

Next week we have even more coming your way—blogging, and a couple of features that might spark some debate. See you then.


Image by Flickr user Rainer Ebert