WEEKEND READING: July 4-5 [updated]

Testing Testing TAP
Beneath the feel-good press releases about national education standards lie unresolved policy differences.

New plans for schools Economist
TO HEAR Ed Balls, the schools secretary, tell it, the saga of British education since the Labour Party came to power in 1997 is a rousing one of derring-do...Another version is that the government has blown £2 billion on micro-managing teachers, and to little effect.

Private schools in the recession Economist
There is little sign of a recession-induced meltdown in private schooling.

The secret life of an American schoolteacher.The New Yorker
The title of the new HBO Sunday-night series “Hung” isn’t meant to be a double entendre of the kind that induces snickers--it’s straightforward descriptive slang, a reference to the physical endowments of the show’s main character, Ray Drecker (Thomas Jane).

Sunday Update:

Can Debutante Classes Break Troubled Teens' Cycle of Pregnancy and Poverty? Dallas Observer             The Ladies by Design Junior Debutante Course is part of a trend in programs springing up to help low-income teens. Often promoted as lessons in such things as hip-hop dance or engine building, the programs are in fact holistic youth development gigs.... From Dallas Observer.

No Swimming Pools Or Frisbee Golf Atlantic                                                                                                    For the White House, it's critical that the $787 billion gets spent efficiently and appropriately, and it's worth noticing that we haven't heard as many rumblings about ridiculous pork projects as one might expect from a spending initiative of this size:

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Aptitude Times Magazine                                                                              Do our merit-based ideas of fairness get us what we deserve?