The world has progressed in amazing ways since 1983, but for the most part, public education has stagnated. In 1983, the first mobile telephones intended for public use were released, ARPANET became the technical foundation of the internet, and A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform was released. The latter was a report...

  The latest progressive education fad is doing serious damage to kids and teachers. Fads aren’t always harmful things. Hula hoops, goldfish swallowing and pet rocks have really not had a detrimental effect on the nation. But when the education establishment pushes its collective whims on millions of school kids and their teachers, the...

Following similar actions in Wisconsin and Iowa, eternal union representation of teachers is a thing of the past in Florida; the new law doesn’t go quite far enough, however. Just imagine that in the 1970s your grandmother hired a lawyer to represent her in a lawsuit, and today, you’re forced to patronize the very same...

Three hundred “must place” teachers in Los Angeles don’t work, but are still on the payroll. What does a school board do with teachers whom no principal wants to hire? In New York, that problem was “solved” this past fall when Mayor Bill De Blasio and school chief Carmen Fariña, began to unload the so-called...

Union rhetoric about the Janus case has gone from hyperbolic to just plain crazy. If successful in the Supreme Court, the Janus v AFSCME case will free public employees from paying a union as a condition of employment in 22 states. Government workers in the other 28 states already have been spared the unions’ forced...

While finger-pointing continues over the Florida school shooting, it’s time to arm our teachers. Understandably, much has been written about the awful school shooting in Parkland, Florida, where 17 young people were slaughtered at the hands of a sick and evil human being. The tragedy was particularly vexing as there were so many warning signs...

Too many schools are failing, and parents need a way for their kids to escape from them. A couple of months ago, the education establishment told us that “U.S. Graduation Rate Hits New All-Time High, With Gains in All Student Groups.” But in the real world this is nothing more than a façade – a...

A recent tactic, “bargaining for the common good” very well may bury the unions in Janus v. AFSCME. In June 2016, right around the time the Friedrichs v CTA case wound up in a 4-4 stalemate, Rachel Cohen wrote a piece for The American Prospect called “Teacher Unions Are ‘Bargaining for the Common Good. ’”...

Teacher union leaders palavering about evil corporations and the rich is a modern-day version of The Emperor’s New Clothes. The teachers unions really need to get some new talking points. Granted, straw men and hyperbole are common in political discourse, but union verbiage needs a serious makeover – the old model is giving hypocrisy a...

As we celebrate National School Choice Week, some data, news and questions about the private option. Though the usual suspects are resolute as ever, school choice is advancing. There are now 469,000 students enrolled in 63 different private school choice programs in 29 states and Washington, D.C. Between 2013 and 2015, enrollment at private schools...