One city neglected to inform its residents that its water supply was laced with cancerous chemicals. Another dissolved its public school district and replaced it with a charter school system, only to witness the for-profit management company it hired flee the scene after determining it couldn’t turn a profit. Numerous cities and school districts in…
Tag: education
Ohio lawmakers want to limit the teaching of the scientific process
Science educators have recognized that teaching science as a large compendium of facts, without reference to the scientific process and theories that bind them together, simply leads to uninterested and uninformed students. So it’s a bit mind-boggling to discover that an Ohio state legislator is attempting to block educators from teaching anything about the scientific process. And…
New Orleans Becomes Nation’s First All-Charter School System
According to the Post, the Orleans Parish school district fired some 7,000 employees after Katrina, most of them African-American, while the teachers hired for the charters have been much more demographically white, many drawn from Teach for America. The fired teachers have won a judgment for wrongful termination, with expected penalties and compensation to amount…
Kansas Gov. Doubles Down On Taxing The Poor More Steeply Than The Rich
Gov. Sam Brownback R will soon sign what he calls the “fabulous package” of sales tax hikes and income tax cuts passed by the Republican-dominated legislature over the weekend. The sales tax rate increase will apply to food as well as other purchases, making it even more targeted at the lower end of the…
Record Number Of Americans Now Have Student Loan Debt
Nearly one-in-five American households now have student loan debt, according to a study released by the Pew Research Center. Overall, 19 percent of households carried some amount of student debt in 2010, up from just 15 percent in 2007. Borrowers on average owed more than $26,000, double what they owed in 1995. Student loan debt…
Mitt Romney: No campaign cash from teachers’ unions
It’s not unusual for Republicans to advocate limiting or eliminating campaign contributions from public employees unions. But in an election cycle where both candidates are raking in large fundraising hauls and super PACs backed by unlimited contributions from wealthy donors are surging, Romney offered a more robust criticism of the campaign finance system. Romney argued…
Everything You’ve Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong
I was calling education officials in search of a school that would let me spend time inside its classrooms. I was looking for a grassroots view of America’s latest run at school reform: How do we know when schools are failing, and why is it so hard to turn them around? Is the close to…
Obama Made A Strong First Impression At Harvard
Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe is a sort of legal rock star, particularly among liberals. First-year law students he has never met don’t just show up at his door saying, “I want to work for you.” At least they didn’t until March 31, 1989. Tribe recently retrieved his daily calendar from that year and pointed to…
Sophomoric? Members Of Congress Talk Like 10th Graders, Analysis Shows
Georgia Republican Rep. Rob Woodall registers the second-lowest grade level: 8.01. An example of Woodalls speech: “What do they say about socialism, Mr. Speaker? Its a great plan until you run out of other peoples money. Guess what? Weve run out of other peoples money. I just want to show you a chart.” Thats five…
The 1 Percent Solution
Nick Hanauer is the kind of innovator and venture capitalist expected to power the country’s next wave of growth. So why does he insist that only the fading middle class can rescue America? SOURCE: Jim Tankersley – NationalJournal.com. The middle class incubates entrepreneurs because it offers a good combination of time, resources, and motivation to invest…
Why So Many Ph.D.s Are On Food Stamps
With the economic troubles of the past few years, it’s no surprise that the number of people using food stamps is soaring. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that an average of 44 million people were on food assistance last year; that’s up from 17 million in 2000. What might be surprising, though, is one…
GOP Candidate Passed Off ‘Home Economics’ Degree As ‘Economics’ Degree
Missouri gubernatorial candidate Dave Spence liked to tout his “economics” degree on his website and at campaign events — but in reality his degree was less about bookkeeping and more about housekeeping. Until Thursday, Spence (R) had claimed on his campaign website that he “earned a degree in Economics” from the University of Missouri (screenshot…
Reporter Ejected From Jeb Bush’s Ed Summit for Asking About Rupert Murdoch
During the Q&A session, Steve Begley, a blogger from the K-12 News Network, asked Klein about what Murdoch had in mind for his foray into the education business, which Murdoch has said is a $500 billion market largely untapped by the corporate world. After noting Klein’s $4.5 million annual compensation, Begley asked him what sort…
Stupid voters enable broken government
We have to move away from easy-to-repeat campaign slogans and promises of easy solutions, because we’re a country with more than 300 million people, a complicated racial and religious history and the world’s largest GDP. There are no easy solutions. So if you’re the kind of person who likes to say “I don’t follow politics,”…
Obama lets states opt out of No Child Left Behind
President Obama unveiled the most significant changes to U.S. education policy in a decade, using his executive authority to give states more flexibility to opt out of some provisions of the controversial No Child Left Behind program that was a signature initiative of President George W. Bush.”We cant let another generation of young people fall…
What if the Secret to Success Is Failure?
Levin had also spent many years trying to figure out how to provide lessons in character to his students, who were almost all black or Latino and from low-income families. At the first KIPP school, in Houston, he and his co-founder, Michael Feinberg, filled the walls with slogans like “Work Hard” and “Be Nice” and…