education reform
ddobbs | October 5, 2009Never know what'll top the charts. Top post was a post I put up in January, "Pfizer takes $2.3 billion offl-label marketing fine." That post reported the news (via FiercePharma) that Pfizer had tucked away in its financial disclosure forms a $2.3 billion charge to end the federal investigation into allegations of off-label promotions of its Cox-2 painkillers, including Bextra. (Lot of money ... but it didn't quite wipe out the company's 2008 net income.) The company had set aside the money as part of a deal it was negotiating Justiice. Finalizing the deal, however, took until September. At…
ddobbs | April 29, 2009As I've noted before, the U.S.'s health-care and education systems share some fundamental flaws: In both medical care and schooling we spend far more than other countries and get substandard results; in both cases, the overspending and poor results occur partly because our decentralized "systems" mean everyone does and measures everything differently, so you can't compare apples to oranges to even find out what works.
The folks at Economix look at this dynamic in education from a return-on-investment perspective:
Education is a form of investment in a country%u2019s labor force and its…
ddobbs | April 10, 2009TAPPED notes that the Times is getting aboard the education reform bus:
THE TIMES ON EDUCATION REFORM.
More evidence that the establishment is getting behind major reforms in how teachers are evaluated and paid: The New York Times editorial board today calls on Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the Obama administration to hold states to tougher accountability standards if they want to receive a piece of the $49 billion school stabilization fund included in the stimulus package:
Mr. Duncan made a wise move by requiring states to finally publish data on their teacher evaluation systems --…
ddobbs | March 11, 2009
Obama gave a major education speech at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce yesterday. The money quote:
For decades, Washington has been trapped in the same stale debates that have paralyzed progress and perpetuated our educational decline. ... It's more money versus more reform, vouchers versus the status quo. There has been partisanship and petty bickering, but little recognition that we need to move beyond the worn fights of the 20th century if we are going to succeed in the 21st Century. Well, the time for finger-pointing is over.
Been much buzz about this talk -- the main points of…
ddobbs | March 6, 2009Ezra Klein reviews Obama's handling of yesterday's health summit -- a piece well worth reading for a taste of how sharply focused and serious Obama is about truly comprehensive health-care reform.
Karen Tumlty, a health-care expert, describes in Time her own family's grueling wrestling match with the health-insurance industry. A timely story -- no pun intended -- as it makes painfully clear that it's not just the 46 million people uninsured (did I just say "just" 46 million people) who fare poorly in the current system.
Genetic Future looks at how a Victorian-era height-prediction system…