Fifty costly years of failure to “fix” education

By Larry Sand
05/07/2019
Research shows that technocratic reforms have made no difference in alleviating the achievement gap. A new study by Eric Hanushek et al. for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) shows that all the top-down fixes – No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, etc. – piled on by the education industrial complex have...

TAGS: Eric Hanushek, Greg Forster, Larry Sand, No Child Left Behind, Programme for International Student Assessment, Rick Hess, school choice, teachers union

Single-Parent Families and Educational Achievement: The Tragedy of Welfare

By R. Claire Friend
03/13/2015
Project TALENT, a government-funded study that tracked the development of 364,000 high school students from 1960-1971, reported significant differences in the academic performance and adult achievement between children who were raised by an unmarried mother in a fatherless home and children who were raised by two biological parents. The results were independent of race and...

TAGS: Programme for International Student Assessment, welfare

American Public Education – At the Bottom of the Class

By R. Claire Friend
03/18/2014
Prior to the focus on self-esteem rather than academics in the education curriculum, California always ranked highest in the nation on student achievement tests. Today, California ranks close to the bottom. In the words of a wag, so goes California, so goes the nation. His insightful admonition has come to pass. US 15-year old students...

TAGS: California public education, Programme for International Student Assessment

Deasy and Duffy: The Dinosaurs Amongst Us

By Larry Sand
03/01/2011
School district and teacher union leaders need to embrace serious education reform or go the way of the Stegosaurus. My post last week concerned itself with the fact that some or even many teachers might lose their jobs come June due to the dire financial straits in which many school districts find themselves. The Los...

TAGS: A.J. Duffy, John Deasy, Los Angeles Unified School District, Programme for International Student Assessment, teachers union, United Teachers of Los Angeles