The yearly NEA convention was as blatantly left-wing as ever, and conservative teachers are staying put. When a bunch of teachers gather for a yearly convention, you might think that education matters would be front and center. But when the National Education Association convenes for its yearly wingding, politics is the centerpiece. And this year’s...

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...

All politics is local. The ageless proverb reminds local communities of the importance of stewarding their local government and voting on local issues. Perhaps no issue is a more important investment in our communities than local education. However, when investments fail to payout, action is necessary. The Inland Empire, home to 11% of the state’s...

Legislators in the Mountain State buckle to the teachers union.  In aggregate, West Virginia’s public schools are not very good. According to the state scorecard, 88 percent of the state’s 116 high schools “do not meet standards” in math. Furthermore, the state’s eighth graders rank 45th nationwide in reading as per the 2017 National Assessment...

Conflating regulation with accountability, teacher union leaders continue their deceptive talking points. While it’s up for grabs who originated the saying, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,” Alex Caputo-Pearl is certainly one of its modern-day avatars. In a recent Washington Post op-ed, the...

Members of the Inland Empire Parent Union march on MLK Day in Murietta, CA. There was a new twist in Riverside County’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration. This year’s parade through the streets of Murietta included members of the Inland Empire Parent Union (IEPU). IEPU President Christina Laster is fighting to get parents more...

Everybody knows that the California education system is broken. Marred by a decline in educational standards, a misuse of public funds and racial discrimination, most parents would have surrendered. One parent in Riverside County decided to fight back. Christina Laster Christina Laster, a mother of four, is anything but apathetic. She has been involved in...

The unions’ “If ya can’t kill ’em, organize ’em” mentality is on display in Chicago. In a refreshingly honest video from 2011, Leo Casey, New York City’s United Federation of Teachers Vice President, equates charter schools to Walmart – both being very resistant to unionization. Pounding on the table at a socialist gathering, he says...

The move to educational freedom brings together some unlikely allies. Shortly after the general election, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten was ecstatic. Writing in The New York Times, she insisted that there was a “realignment in the electorate.” She also claimed that “voters responded to a decade of disinvestment in public education and...

This is the fourth in a series of missives to the president of the American Federation of Teachers. (The first three can be accessed here, here and here.)  My Dear Randi, It has been a while! I hope you are well, though I suspect recent events have you a bit off-kilter or even a tad...