"Welcome Back, Kotter" starred Gabe Kaplan as a high school teacher returning to his alma mater in Brooklyn to take over an unruly class of remedial students known collectively as the Sweathogs (because their top-floor classroom was always hot).
Moreover, they say, they ignore the reality that teachers are only the top in-classroom determinant of student performance, that factors such as poverty do count.
It is, in the simplest sense, to refocus resources on the nuclear core of what makes college so important: a top-quality classroom education.
Next, a wise woman recalled the jar of dolly mixtures that sat on top of the classroom cupboard as a reward for good behaviour when she was a child, and the fear of never receiving a handful.
"To get our top rating, every classroom has to have a soft corner," she said.
Use a white board or chalk board at the top of the classroom, if you don't have one then use notebook on your PC or paint, or even get a piece of paper and a sticker and stick the paper on the wall and use it as a white board.
For example, children still collect soda cans and box tops to buy classroom equipment.
In essence, they adopt the model created by Teach for America, a nonprofit organization that a decade ago bucked the education establishment by putting fresh graduates of the nation's top colleges into classrooms after brief summer training.
With the number of people taking the GMAT admissions text expected to reach a record level by the end of 2009, the competition for places in the world's top business school classrooms is fierce.
Thanks to a cutting-edge initiative at a Scottish school, SpongeBob SquarePants, Dr Who, The Titanic and Famous People are currently taking top billing in the classroom.
Hannigan knows firsthand that undergraduates who don't have top scores in the classroom may have the makings of a scientist.
