Barrier to Learning: How the National Education Association Prevents Students and Teachers from Achieving Academic and Professional Excellence
The Evergreen Freedom Foundation July 2004
The Evergreen Freedom Foundation July 2004
Karen Hawley Mills, Education Resource Strategies and Marguerite Roza, University of Washington, Center for Reinventing Public EducationJuly 15, 2004
National Center for Education StatisticsJuly 2004
Neal McCluskey, Cato InstituteJuly 7, 2004
Christopher W. Hammons, Alabama Policy InstituteApril 2004
The U.S. keeps hiring scads more teachers. Their ranks have swollen markedly faster than school enrollments.
We're not sure if our endorsement helps or hurts, but we'd love to see Samuel Freedman, now filling in for Michael Winerip as the "On Education" columnist for the New York Times, get the job permanently. By contrast to Winerip, who has only two gears - frothing and grumbling - Freedman is calm, clear, and open-minded.
We've made the case that local districts should not charter schools, since it ordinarily makes one competitor responsible for another's existence - a classic fox/henhouse situation. Some have suggested that this line of thinking is too cynical and doesn't give districts enough credit. Maybe.
Talk about "defining success." For years, all 32 of Michigan's teacher-training institutions reported that 100 percent of their graduates passed state certification exams. However, a report from the Michigan education department found that those pass rates actually ranged from 66 to 97 percent for first-time test takers.
Analysts beyond counting, beginning with the late, great James Coleman, have shown beyond peradventure that increased spending on education is not related to increases in student achievement. Yet the conventional wisdom still resists that powerful insight.
Gadfly adores poetry, especially when memorized. This is, no doubt, a hangover from his days in fly school, when he was forced to memorize "Paul Revere's Ride," "The Walrus and the Carpenter," and other favorites. Today, such memorization is widely considered a form of oppression if not child abuse.