Commentary
Denver Public Schools Employee Compensation: The Role of Pension Benefits
Sari Levy, Van Schoales, and Tony LewisPiton and Donnell-Kay FoundationsMarch 2008
Commentary
Sunshine State dark age
The evolution debate in Florida grows tiresome, and not only because Ben Stein--he of somnolent monotone--is now involved, but because it keeps reiterating the same, tired points albeit in different ways.
Commentary
Commentary
Accountability that even a teacher could love
Good leaders know that the buck stops with them; others need to be reminded. So reasons the Mississippi Board of Education, which pushed through the state's House of Representatives a bill to remove underperforming superintendents from their jobs, even if they were elected by the public.
Commentary
What's eating Gordon Brown?
Classes will be affected by class resentments if British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, have their way. While both men offer beaucoup platitudes about increasing the skills of Britain's workforce and its global economic competitiveness, their government is, contemporaneously, attempting to dull the few sparkling parts of the U.K.'s educational system.
Commentary
WWSD?
Ever since the release of his biography of Al Shanker, Tough Liberal, Richard Kahlenberg has been busy penning articles about the education issue du jour, asking always: What would Shanker do?
Commentary
Separation of church and class
The Hillsborough County school district (Tampa) has adopted a secular academic calendar, according to which religious holidays are not free days: the school must go on. For Good Friday, however, the district announced that it would excuse all absences--whether for religious reasons or not. To complicate matters further, some parents received the news via telephone message while others did not.
Commentary
Running to Roget
As members of the Massachusetts State Board of Education rack their collective brain by searching for kinder words than "underperforming" with which to label sorry schools, the board's only student member, Zachary Tsetsos, seemed to be also the only one with any common sense. "Why are we spending time on this?" he asked.