Daniel Wolff's Blog

• HOW LINCOLN LEARNED TO READ in and out of Chicagoland

  November 9, 2009

  •   A week in the mid-west, doing readings and having discussions, reconfirms that this is the real pay-off from writing a book: the talk that follows, the agreements and disagreements, the issues raised. It's like the book continues to be written - in public - person by person.            There was the school teacher, a veteran of twenty-plus years in the public system, who asserted ...
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• Speculating on Education

  September 29, 2009

  • "We’re not speculators. We’re investors.” So says the CEO of a real estate trust that recently sunk some $170 million into 22 charter schools. Which got me wondering: why charter schools? How do they end up looking like sound investments? It turns out the buyer, Entertainment Properties Trust (EPR), buys real estate nationwide, with its total portfolio worth about $2.6 billion. Over ...
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• Education Week 8/25/09 COmmentary

  August 31, 2009

  • CommentaryThe President's Laugh LineBy Daniel Wolff  In President Barack Obama’s first major speech on education, in March of this year, he presented five “pillars of our education reform agenda.” Only one of them got a laugh.As well as better standards and assessments and more charter schools, he proposed merit pay for teachers. Plenty of controversies there, not so many punch ...
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