As we transition into 2023, we can see that the field of education will once again be a contentious one, as too many government-run schools are failing, and parents are not happy. In Chicago, for example, great numbers of students are avoiding their local schools. In fact, more than one-third of the city’s public schools...
The Orange County Classical Academy (OCCA) was recognized this week as a California Distinguished School, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond announced. OCCA, a high-performing public charter school, was the only school to receive the prestigious 2023 award in Orange Unified School District. “Orange County Classical Academy truly deserves to be recognized as a...
Fighting for a sane measure for educators. Years ago, when I was teaching, I asked then United Teachers of Los Angeles president A.J. Duffy at a union meeting why teachers weren’t responsible for paying their own dues. He replied, “They might forget.” I didn’t respond, but knew that some of my colleagues were thinking what...
California is considering paying “reparations” to Black Californians who are directly descended from enslaved people, which may surprise most Californians. After all, slavery was never legal in the Golden State. Governor Newsom, heedless of the fiasco he’s inviting, formed a “Reparations Task Force,” no doubt with his future presidential aspirations in mind. The task force...
And how they ultimately hurt minority students and expose a glaring hypocrisy in the California education system. State-funded universities in California are pushing to use race as a metric for college admissions, a practice many Californians believe should stay in the past. But while claiming to champion educational opportunity for low-income and minority students,...
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...
Just a few months ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom was bragging about California’s “$100 billion budget surplus.” At the same time, the California Policy Center was pointing out that the governor’s “surplus” was fantasy – that state and local governments owed about $1.6 trillion. In those heady days, however, with obliging media cheering him on, Newsom...
About 20 years ago, I read an ad in a local Sacramento newspaper that said “Get a government job and become an instant millionaire.” The ad went on to describe how public bureaucrats in California enjoyed benefits private sector employees can only dream of, including a guaranteed retirement pension worth the equivalent of millions of...
Election results show that parental freedom is on the move, but too many children are still stuck in government-run schools with few options. The election on November 8th was good for the school choice movement. As Corey DeAngelis, senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, explains, 76% of candidates supported by his organization won...
Successfully coping with severe droughts in California and the Southwest requires tough choices, all of them expensive and none of them perfect. But taking millions of acres out of cultivation and replacing them with solar farms is not the answer. California produces over one-third of America’s vegetables and three quarters of the country’s fruits and nuts –...
Teachers unions finally have some competition in all-important school board races. It’s no secret that the teachers unions have control over most aspects of public education in the U.S. The school boards, which negotiate with unions over salary, work rules, etc. are particularly important for the unions to dominate. To that end, Michael Hartney, a...
NEA & AFT back race-based admission policies. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that could reverse the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, in which SCOTUS asserted that the use of an applicant’s race as a factor in an admissions policy of a public educational institution does not violate...
With the November 8 election already ten days ago, we are now conditioned to accept that some final results will not be known until December 16, five weeks later. Counting proceeds at a crawl in counties up and down the state, and those among us with housebroken political sentiments are expected to be impressed at...