Teachers union, which have defended the "single salary schedule" like the Rock of Gibraltar, are beginning to sign on to "combat pay", i.e. bonuses for teaching in high-poverty schools. Both the Massachusetts Teachers Association and the Bay State's AFT chapter recently announced their support for this form of "differential" pay.
Forget the sleek and powerful PS3. Designers for the nonprofit project One Laptop Per Child have modified a conventional computer and made it ultra portable, energy efficient, and incredibly cheap. The new $150 laptop will be making its way into the hands of millions of students in developing countries in mid-2007.
"Anti-poverty paternalism." Applied to education, it means teaching "middle class" habits to poor children and rewiring the dysfunctional behaviors and values imparted by neighborhoods and, sometimes, parents (see
So many insights, memories, and tributes have been lavished upon the late great Milton Friedman since his death on November 16th that we can add little. We suspect, however, that many Gadfly readers are acquainted primarily with Friedman's extraordinary contributions to education policy. He was, quite simply, the intellectual and spiritual father of school choice in America.
Principal Al Sanchez thought he was doing the student a favor. When Fidel Maldonado Jr.--a 15-year-old at Rio Grande High School and a boxer--showed up on campus with what Sanchez took to be a gang-style haircut, he gave the student a choice. Shave it off or face suspension.
Regarding last week's editorial ("‘Just Do It' just won't do it," November 30th) about bringing every child to proficiency in reading and math by 2014, it should be noted that not even KIPP (or Amistad or Northstar) has achieved 100 percent proficiency. Neither has Singapore or Sweden.
At last week's American Enterprise Institute-Fordham conference on the No Child Left Behind Act's "remedies" for low-performing schools, paper after paper reported how little use is being made of that law's "public school choice" option for kids whose present schools
Who knew that the New Republic's Jonathan Chait had such love for the free market? But there he was the other day in the Los Angeles Times, the liberal writer doing his best imitation of F.A. Hayek.
National Conference of State Legislatures, Blue Ribbon Commission on Higher EducationOctober 2006
Bryan C. Hassel, Emily Ayscue-Hassel, and Julie KowalNational Association of Charter School Authorizers2006
