Report Card on American Education: A State-by-State Analysis, 15th Edition
Andrew LeFevreAmerican Legislative Exchange Council2008
Andrew LeFevreAmerican Legislative Exchange Council2008
In case you were curious about last week's Gadfly email title ("Time to retire"), we are here to assure you: neither we nor Mr. Gadfly are planning to superannuate. Our email server, which tends to have a mind of its own, snipped off the last half of our feature editorial's appellation.
Traditionalists often lament the disappearance of letter-writing, personal notes, and other niceties of a time gone by. But have they ever considered the environmental impact of all that stationery? Ruth Loucks's fourth and fifth graders at Brant Central School in Southwestern Ontario have such matters on their minds.
Calling all recent unemployed college grads! Hundreds (yes, hundreds!) of teachers in the Anne Arundel County, Maryland school district earn over $100,000 per year in salary alone, not to mention extremely generous benefits and a guaranteed pension that can bank as much $2 million buckaroos for a person of normal life expectancy.
If the decline of Catholic schools is disturbing trend number one, this is disturbing trend numero dos: highly celebrated and successful charter schools being unionized.
At press time, your boss's stimulus package was hurtling toward final passage. We still don't know how much you're getting of what you wanted. But one thing is certain: you're going to have more discretion over more federal dollars than any education secretary in history. Which is not entirely a blessing. Remember the adage, "be careful what you wish for"?
Gadfly must have been thinking fondly back to the days of yore when he misspelled the first name of one of our guest editorialists. The Center for American Progress's Mr. Miller spells his first name Raegen not Raegan.
After last week's bursts of Reform-o-Meter ratings, it's been all quiet on the Southwestern (Maryland Avenue) front.
Perhaps the only thing related to K-12 education that Ohio's governor and lawmakers aren't talking about ???????fixing??????? is the State Teachers Retirement System (STRS). Odd, as few things are more outdated and in need of reform than the pension system.
AEI's Rick Hess (our Gadfly Show co-host) picks up on some themes elaborated at last week's ???Left at the Altar???
Regular Flypaper readers know that I've been skeptical of the stimulus package moving through Congress, at least as it relates to education.
This morning on National Review Online, AEI's Rick Hess urges Republican lawmakers not to roll over when it comes to education spending in the stimulus bill. The package has lots of fat for states and districts but, explains Hess,
So says Benjamin Berrafato, a fifth grader at??New Lane Memorial Elementary School in Selden, New York. This young man composed an open letter to his classmates recently (reprinted by the New York Daily News, no less) urging them to resist "illegal" homework.
As President Barack Obama might have said, I screwed up on Friday afternoon when I reported that Senate moderates had agree to strip "most" education funding from the bill. There are cuts, to be sure, but??the majority??of the money remains.
I'm sitting in my downtown Washington office but I'm thinking of snowy trails in the White Mountains. That's because I'm participating in "The Exchange with Laura Knoy," a public radio show out of New Hampshire.
The lady with a mission has a soft side. This morning's Washington Post featured an editorial from DC Chancellor of Schools herself. I couldn't help but hear a sharply defensive tone throughout and be somewhat mystified by the whole thing.
OK, I'm jumping the gun a bit, but I'm hearing a lot of chatter that indicates that Linda Darling-Hammond is almost certainly getting the Department of Education's #
It almost seems too good to be true, but lo and behold, a ???gang??? of moderate Senators from both sides of the aisle are pushing to reduce the amount of money in the stimulus package going to schools.
That's the word on the street (and on the hill). As I explain below, that's not such a bad thing.
Charles Krauthammer takes a swing at the stimulus today in the Washington Post. Of note, he uses education to illustrate the wastefulness of the unstimulating stimulus:
President Barack Obama takes to the pages of the Washington Post today to defend his stimulus plan .
Our Reform-o-Meter is getting a workout now that the Obama Administration is announcing new Department of Education appointees daily.
We love the blogsophere over here at Flypaper, which is why we want to tell you about a neat new blog launched today: Mind the Gaps.
We know you wait, every week, with bated breath for your RSS feed to tell you that the Gadfly has arrived. Well, wait no longer. In the top spot, find a thought-provoking (and chillingly true) editorial from Raegen T.
We've pointed out some of the provisions of Ohio Governor Ted Strickland's education plan that we aren't too fond of.???? But that's not to say the entire plan is without merit.
National Council on Teacher Quality2008