Category: Education

  • Teacher tenure reform starts

    The system of teacher tenure has suffered a blow that could spread to other parts of the country. Washington D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee has fired 241 teachers for poor performance, are more are on notice. This is in a school system where, according to Wall Street Journal reporting, “Ms. Rhee said Friday she took…

  • The long reach of teachers unions

    At one time teachers unions were professional organizations. Now they have been transformed into the same type industrial trade union that represents autoworkers or steelmakers, with the same political clout and parochial interests. This is at the same time that teachers demand respect for being professionals.

  • American education in 2030: teacher pay

    Caroline Hoxby, a Stanford University economics professor who studies the economics of education, looks at the future of teacher pay and teaching. While her vision of what might happen is positive for both teachers and schoolchildren, substantial change will need to take place for this vision to be realized. Specifically, the nation will have to…

  • When informed, attitudes toward public school spending change

    One of the problems with forming public policy is the lack of information possessed by the general public, and, sometimes, even by elected officials. A recent research report published by the Hoover Institution titled Educating the Public measures the problem. Importantly, this report shows the changes in people’s attitudes when they receive correct information.

  • The inevitability of parental choice

    By Howie Rich A year ago, the nation’s largest newspaper wrote in an editorial that it was time to “move beyond vouchers” in the debate over America’s educational future. Although it did not reject any particular solution outright, the paper’s recommendation at the time was that America focus its energy and attention on less controversial…

  • School choice is a civil rights issue

    Al Sharpton called school reform the civil rights challenge of our time. He said that the enemy of opportunity for blacks in the U.S. was once Jim Crow; today, in a slap at the educational establishment, he said it was “Professor James Crow.” Sharpton is only partly correct. School reform is not solely a racial…

  • Education reformer to speak in Wichita

    Noted education activist and reformer John Taylor Gatto will be appearing in Wichita on May 22. Gatto will present an insider’s perspective on problems within public schools. He is the author of The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling.

  • In voucher debate, who can we believe?

    Two articles appearing close together in the same prominent newspaper illustrate the problem in trying to make sense of school choice programs. These articles are Voucher plan would help sponsor, not students (February 4, 2009 Atlanta Journal-Constitution), which is opposed to vouchers, and Will School vouchers improve public education? Yes: New studies show all students’…

  • Stimulus bill payoff to wrong education interests

    The Wall Street Journal analyzes some of the earmarks in the stimulus bill, and finds that specific provisions for spending are going to be wasted — except that they payoff special interests: