- The notion of character education is pretty well understood by now. If successfully imparted to disadvantaged children, advocates claim, personal qualities like grit, gratitude, and optimism can steer them to beneficial habits and help them catch up with their more well-to-do classmates. “No-excuses” charter networks like KIPP have energetically publicized their commitment to the philosophy, monitoring students’ progress in the development of such traits. But a piece in the New Republic takes a more dubious stance. The author, whose initial interest in KIPP’s approach cooled after taking part in program founder Dave Levin’s online class, writes that his newfound reservations about character education are threefold: Nobody actually knows how to teach character; it’s being taught in a morality-neutral way; and it narrows the scope of education. Some of the article’s assertions are downright goofy (“While it takes grit and self-control to be a successful heart surgeon, the same could be said about a suicide bomber.” Dude, what?), but he’s right that there’s still too little evidence of positive character maturation driven by initiatives like KIPP’s. And our obsession with “performance character” should be matched with equal concern for “moral character.” Clearly the subject is ripe for more investigation.
- According to the New York Times, big urban districts like Louisville, Oklahoma City, and Providence are rushing to fill hundreds of job openings before the new academic year starts. The dearth of qualified professionals (twenty-one thousand vacancies remain in California alone) is pinned on the 2008 recession and the end of President Obama’s stimulus program, which forced states and municipalities to carry out mass layoffs; the subsequent recovery, meanwhile, has reportedly fostered a job market attractive enough to draw prospective recruits out of the field. Undermanned schools have responded by hiring trainees who are still finishing up their teaching degrees, which isn’t always helpful. As others have pointed out, though, the supposedly diminished talent pool has still vastly expanded over the course of the last decade. Whether our 2015 quantity actually represents a surfeit or a shortage, it’s clear that we need to focus on improving the quality of our educators—and getting more out of the best ones.
- You may already be following the tangled case of Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a lawsuit that was added to the Supreme Court docket several few months ago. In brief, Orange County public school teacher Rebecca Friedrichs, joined by several other teachers and the Christian Educators Association, filed suit against the powerful union in an effort to end the levying of “agency fees” for non-members. The fees are permitted under state law so long as they are earmarked for apolitical operations. The case against them, laid out eloquently by Friedrichs and a co-plaintiff in an interview with the Washington Post, is that unions’ revenues are fungible, and their organizing efforts can’t possibly be extricated from politics. “Collective bargaining is being used to push for things that I would never agree to,” Friedrichs says, such as generous pension plans, anti-voucher drives, and same-sex marriage. The case has the potential to transform the country into a right-to-work nation from coast to coast. Sounds good to us.
