As shown by the 2019 NAEP, most of our students are being badly shortchanged. The latest bad education news comes to us courtesy of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The most recent exam was administered to high school seniors in early 2019, a full year before the COVID-19 lockdowns. The so-called “Nation’s Report...

The abusive education monopoly must go. Having retired as a teacher over ten years ago, I often look back on some of the great educators that I worked with during my 28-year career, and how lucky their students were to have them. I also think about the stinkers I encountered, and how sad it is...

A literacy lawsuit is due to go to trial in October, but little will change if it is successful. Americans are shockingly weak in civics. The latest Annenberg Public Policy Center survey finds that only 39 percent could name the three branches of U.S. government and less than one-quarter know that Congress has to muster...

American Federation of Teachers demands justice in Saudi Arabia and compassion for the vulnerable in Syria, but in the U.S., it’s a very different story. As a way to show that they are “PEOPLE WHO REALLY CARE,” Randi Weingarten and her cronies at the American Federation of Teachers have been making forays into foreign policy....

November saw a rash of stories about the troubled public school monolith. As I wrote last week, the public education brand is in trouble and as 2017 fades away, a wave of stories is sending the year out with not a bang or a whimper, but rather with an unceremonious thud. A Public Policy of...

Betsy DeVos’ ridesharing analogy is spot on, but draws Randi’s wrath.  At the Brookings Institution last week, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos gave a talk in which she drew parallels between school choice and the ascendancy of ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft. “Just as the traditional taxi systems revolted against ridesharing, so too does the...

Though better than the current law, a new tenure bill doesn’t go nearly far enough. As things stand, k-12 public school teachers in California are essentially guaranteed lifetime employment if they can get through their first two years on the job. This puts a lot of pressure on principals, as they must decide by March...

Which meant it was a very good week for the rest of us.  Last week, labor unions took a series of body blows. First, it was announced Monday that Missouri had become the 28th right-to-work state. The Show-Me State showed the unions that worker freedom now takes precedence over their forced dues racket. Not only that, but...

Randi Weingarten and Hillary Clinton embrace, as parents sue to modify rigid, anti-child union work rules. The yearly American Federation of Teachers wingding was a doozie this year. The 100th anniversary of the union and the presence of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton made for an especially noxious four days in Minnesota – a forced...

Despite the U.S. declaring its independence from Britain in 1776, Californians are still saddled with teacher union redcoats 240 years later. Teacher tenure is an atrocity. Officially called “permanence,” this union-mandated work rule allows some teachers to stay in the classroom when they should be imprisoned or at least working somewhere else, preferably far away...