Californians have abysmally low levels of civic engagement as evidenced by the recent election where voter turnout set an historic low. And the widespread disengagement of California’s younger voters is even worse. True, in 2008 California’s youth turned out in large numbers to elect Barack Obama as President. And in 2012 they turned out again...
As the need for vouchers increases, the politics of school privatization gets interestinger and interestinger. “Some NYC teachers: ‘Don’t send your kids here!’” screamed the headline in a New York Post article last week. The damning story goes on to explain how over 80 percent of the teachers in eight public schools – including charters...
“Teachers Unions Take a Beating in Midterm Races” “Teachers Unions Take a Shellacking” “Teachers Unions Get Schooled in 2014 Election” The above is just a small sampling of post-election headlines which flooded the media after last Tuesday’s historic election, which generated a major political shakeup in the nation’s capital as well as state houses from...
Results from the Nov. 4 yielded both hits and misses regarding prospects for advancing education reform in the Golden State, along with a few immediate lessons: Understand your fight You can’t buy elections – especially the obscure post of superintendent of Public Instruction, a constitutional office created seemingly to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary...
The 2014 mid-term elections will be remembered for many things – pioneering use of information technology to comprehensively profile and micro-target voters, escalating use of polarizing rhetoric, historically low levels of voter turnout, and historic records in total spending. In California, in spite of all this money and technology – or perhaps because of it...
Unions demand apologies, but refuse to make any themselves. The cover of the November 3rd edition of Time Magazine reads “It’s nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher; some tech millionaires may have found a way to change that.” Accompanying the text is a photo of a judge’s gavel about to pound an apple. The...
“As the result of California Courts refusing to uphold the language of the High Speed Rail bonds, the opponents of any bond proposal, at either the state or local level, need only point to High-Speed Rail to remind voters that promises in a voter approved bond proposal are meaningless and unenforceable.” – Jon Coupal, October...
It was only a matter of time before the Los Angeles school chief was run out of town. John Deasy is the latest to exit the fast-moving revolving door known as Los Angeles School Superintendent. The job – really an impossible one – saw Roy Romer replace Ray Cortines in 2001. Romer in turn was...
The names Doreen Diaz and Bartola Del Villar appear nowhere in the text of the Parent Empowerment Act, also known as the Parent Trigger, that I wrote in 2010. The law empowers parents to bypass the political paralysis of our education bureaucracy that is responsible for perpetuating the status quo failure of our schools. Today,...
Reformer battles with teachers union darling for top education position in Sacramento. “Teachers Unions Are Putting Themselves On November’s Ballot” was the headline in a recent article by Haley Edwards in Time Magazine. Okay, this is hardly news, but the extent of the largess is eye-opening. Considering that this is not a presidential election year,...
School reformers in Philly decide to help taxpayers and kids; teachers unions fume. Philadelphia can be a tough town – so tough, in fact, that in 1968, frustrated and cranky Eagles fans even booed Santa Claus at a late season game. When that didn’t scare off old St. Nick, the hostile fans unleashed a barrage...
There has been a great deal of public attention on the problem of bullying in our public schools. Issues such as possible causes as well as appropriate administrative and legal remedies have been hotly debated across the country by educators, parents and politicians with varying responses. The focus of bullying heretofore has been limited to...
A new study reveals that vouchers save Americans a bucket load of cash. A blockbuster report released last week shows that the American taxpayer is much better off living in a locale where school vouchers have been instituted. Vouchers, which enable children to use public funding to attend private schools, are available in scattered states...
The latest chapter in “kill or unionize” sees the unions in organize mode. As I’ve written before, the teachers unions have a constantly shifting relationship with charter schools. When Mercury is in retrograde, the unions want to limit their growth or legislate the publicly-funded schools of choice out of existence. At other times, organizing them...