Charles Ferris

    In more than one publication recently there have been articles on the increase in the diagnosis of ADD and ADHD among children. The articles all refer to the large increase of children being diagnosed with these conditions. Are ADD, ADHD overdiagnosed in children? The questions that come up are reasonable. Is there...

When spring nudges winter aside, the opportunities for learning are many, and quite a lot of it happens outside. Spring isn’t a static event that is the same everywhere. In different parts of the country, spring can either mean that flowers have started blossoming, birds have begun to sing early in the morning, and...

It seems as though there is a problem with high achieving high school seniors who come from limited means and the colleges at which they apply. An analysis of every high school student who took the SAT was conducted by Caroline Hoxby of Stanford and Christopher Avery of Harvard. They have many years as...

  An article in the Sacramento Bee today, March 5, reports on the election for school board members in Los Angeles, California. The article was written by Jennifer Medina of the New York Times. The odd bit about the school board election in L.A. is that money, a lot of it, is being funneled...

Last Sunday, February 24, an article regarding older workers was in the Sacramento Bee. The article, written by Anita Creamer, focused on the aging of the workforce. She pointed out, quite correctly I think, that the number of older workers had squat to do with people living longer, or being more healthy. There are...

  The President, in his speech to congress, once again broached the idea of pre-school for all children. Briefly stated, the costs would be borne by the federal and state governments, perhaps on a sliding scale, maybe on a needs basis. Details will have to be worked out. The devil is always in the...

Education is an ever moving critter. At the same time, some of that movement is simply a shiny new wrapper for an old idea. The trick is to be able to deal with the shiny new wrapper, and take what’s good and use it. Classroom flipping. Flipping the classroom. One thing is for certain:...

Education “reformers” are as thick as overcooked oatmeal these days. It seems as though there is a never ending supply of experts willing to expound on how to fix all there is that is out of whack with the educational system. While there are issues with the educational system, from the youngest in Kindergarten...

The promise of online education has been in the air for quite some time now. So far, it hasn’t hit the big time in the public higher ed realm. That may be changing, especially in California. In his State of the State address, Gov. Brown laid out his vision for California for the next...

  California has lost one of its greatest. Huell Howser died at age 67 on Sunday, January 6. He was simply one of the most interesting and entertaining people to ever grace the TV airwaves. When I first came across his program many years ago, California’s Gold, I could hardly believe how hokey it...