New governor of the People’s Republic of California wants to expand a dubious universal preschool plan. California’s new Governor Gavin Newsom envisions a future where the state will be involved in your children’s lives from conception to adulthood. Newsom told EdSource in September, “Our role begins when babies are still in the womb and it...

Predominantly minority D.C school kids are not sharing NEA leader’s glee over President Obama’s budget. Last week, President Obama released his administration’s budget for fiscal year 2015 and National Education Association president Dennis Van Roekel was ecstatic. He was especially pleased that Obama plans to move “towards ending the era of austerity.” (Austerity? I must...

CA announces a budget surplus — and legislators can’t wait to blow it. It’s hardly surprising, but California’s we-never-met-a-big-budget-bill-we-didn’t-like Democratic lawmakers and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson have joined hands to sponsor SB 837, new legislation that would provide free public preschool to every four-year-old child in California. The Kindergarten Readiness Act of 2014, introduced...

Good week for debunking teachers union hype, big government waste and mainstream media distortions. The factually challenged Valerie Strauss unleashed a doozie in her Washington Post blog last week. As Alabama was passing tax credit legislation, Strauss, as she so often does, echoed the teachers union line, railing about the program being “welfare for the...

The only “lasting impact” of the Head Start program is on taxpayers’ wallets. Those too-clever-for-words folks over at the Department of Health and Human Services have yet again tried to put one over on us. Using the oldest PR trick in the book, they released information to the media that they hoped no one would...

The teachers union not only plays the poverty card, but by battling reforms, ensures that the impoverished will remain that way. “No Education Reform Without Tackling Poverty, Experts Say,” is the title of an article on the National Education Association website. Experts? A trip into the weeds leads to something called the Center on Poverty,...