How to Save Your School District From the Coming Financial Crisis

By California Policy Center
01/17/2023
The teachers-union-backed California School Boards Association (CSBA) is warning school officials that a financial crisis is coming for the state’s hundreds of school districts. CSBA’s advice: Beg for a handout. “At a time when 25 cents of every dollar received by local schools goes toward pension obligations, districts and county offices of education need more...

TAGS: California government unions, California public education, California School Boards Association, California Teachers Association, Charter schools, public education

Our Devastating Education Schemes

By Larry Sand
12/08/2022
We need to get back to educational basics.   Little did I know that when I was teaching in the 1990s and “multicultural education” became all the rage, that it was just the beginning of an onslaught of radical endeavors that shows no sign of abating. As 2022 winds down, let’s take a glimpse at...

TAGS: California Federation of Teachers, California public education, california public schools, California teachers unions, critical race theory, public education, teachers union

Do American Students’ Lives Matter?

By Larry Sand
09/09/2022
The results of the first post-lockdown National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were released on June 1, and they showed anything but progress. Most subgroups took a big hit, but Blacks and Hispanics suffered the greatest damage. Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the test, said, “These results are...

TAGS: California public education, california public schools, education, public education, Students First, Students Matter

Charter Schools Highlight the Inequity of Traditional Public Education

By RiShawn Biddle
03/06/2017
There have been, and no doubt, are now taking place, many studies of how the results obtained by the nation’s public charter schools differ from those of other public schools with similar student populations. Depending on the study you cite, either charter schools do better than traditional districts in improving student or do no better....

TAGS: Charter schools, Dropout Nation, public education, RiShawn Biddle

How America's Business Lobby Often Opposes Free Markets

By Martin Hutchinson
08/20/2014
Traditionally, business was the most important political backer of free markets, which made sense because business needs markets in order to exist at all. However, in the last generation, the views of business, as expressed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other outlets, have increasingly diverged from the free-market ideal. As crony capitalist ideas...

TAGS: Common Core, crony capitalism, public education, school vouchers

Common Core: A Trojan Horse?

By R. Claire Friend
04/07/2014
The deceptively innocuous-sounding name belies the crippling effects a centralized K-12 education curriculum will have on the United States once it is allowed to take effect. Ze’ev Wurman, software architect, electrical engineer and longtime math advisory expert, feels Common Core is a federally-enforced “mediocre national benchmark” that “marks the cessation of educational standards improvement” and...

TAGS: No Child Left Behind, public education

Where is Public Education Money Going?

By Mike Shedlock
05/01/2013
Given the constant chatter from the Obama administration and from teachers’ unions on the need to spend more for public education, let’s address the question “Is the US spending enough on education?” I propose we look at the stats in graphical form starting with charts of population and total spending, culminating with education spending per...

TAGS: public education