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Starting this fall, thousands of poor and middle-class kids will get vouchers covering the full cost of tuition at more than 120 private schools across Louisiana, including small, Bible-based church schools. The following year, students of any income will be eligible for mini-vouchers that they can use to pay a range of private-sector vendors for classes and apprenticeships not offered in traditional public schools. The money can go to industry trade groups, businesses, online schools and tutors, among others. Every time a student receives a voucher of either type, his local public school will lose a chunk of state funding.

In 1962, as tensions ran high between school districts and unions across the country, members of the National Education Association gathered in Denver for the organization’s 100th annual convention. Among the speakers was Arthur F. Corey, executive director of the California Teachers Association (CTA). “The strike as a weapon for teachers is inappropriate, unprofessional, illegal, outmoded, and ineffective,” Corey told the crowd. “You can’t go out on an illegal strike one day and expect to go back to your classroom and teach good citizenship the next.” Fast-forward nearly 50 years to May 2011, when the CTA—now the single most powerful...

When Detroit Public Schools were assigned an emergency financial manager by the state, we thought he would have the power to turn things around, more or less, with a snap of his fingers. Turns out that’s not the case, due in large part to a thick document known as a teachers contract, or collective bargaining agreement. In Detroit (and most other school districts across the nation) these documents contain seemingly mundane provisions that cost taxpayers and school districts millions of dollars. Those provisions have been sucking a lot money out of Detroit Public Schools, a cash-starved district that can’t afford...

Earlier this month, the presidents of America's two largest teachers unions co-hosted a screening of the new documentary "Bully." The movie, of course, aims to combat bullying of schoolchildren. But even as they publicly eschew bullying, these unions and their locals across the nation bully teachers and competing organizations to maintain membership and power. I have published a new report on the details of this ugly trend in School Reform News. In February, a Utah teacher named Cole Kelly testified in favor of a bill that would penalize school districts for not granting all teacher organizations -- not just unions,...

Your raise or your job. That’s the choice facing members of the Clark County Education Association (CCEA), the union that represents teachers in Nevada’s Clark County School District (CCSD). The district is facing a $78 million deficit for the 2011-13 budget cycle, and needs to freeze teachers’ pay in order to avoid laying off 1,000 teachers by April. While most people would choose their job over a pay raise—as CCSD support staff and administrators have done—CCEA members have refused. An arbitrator will soon decide whether all teachers will take a pay freeze, or if some members will get paid raises...

AURORA, Colo. (AP) - A 6-year-old boy was suspended from his suburban Denver school for three days after school officials said he told a girl "I'm sexy and I know it," a line from a popular song. D'Avonte Meadows, a first-grader at Sable Elementary School in Aurora, is accused of sexual harassment and disrupting other students, according to a letter the school district sent to his mother after he was sent home Wednesday.

A Tennessee Middle School football coach, aged 26 was fired for writing and performing a song critical of The One because a few parents complained. Here is the link. Great song! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfH46DTAkxo

The Michigan Education Association’s newest strategy is to portray their teachers as underpaid while hoping no one is paying attention to the figures they are using to make their case, says one education policy expert. “Clearly, their facts are not straight,” said Michael Van Beek, education policy director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. It started when Steve Cook, the MEA’s president, said in a Detroit News op-ed that one teacher who contacted him was in his second year of teaching with a master’s degree and made $31,000 a year. Michigan Capitol Confidential looked at the contracts of the...

Virginia middle school teacher is under fire after making his students do "opposition research" on Republican presidential candidates, according to a report. Eighth-graders at Liberty Middle School in Fairfax County were assigned to research the backgrounds and positions of Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul and find any “weaknesses,” according to The Daily Caller. The students were then required to draft a strategy paper, mapping out how to exploit those weaknesses and then research how to forward it to the Obama campaign.

The Michigan Education Association was the fourth wealthiest union among its peers under the National Education Association umbrella and the MEA’s employee payroll was third-highest in the country as of 2009-10, according to a union watchdog organization. Despite a 0.9 percent drop in total income in 2009-10 from the previous year, the MEA still brought in $77.4 million in 2009-10, the fourth-highest in the country among the 53 NEA affiliates. Only California at $186.2 million, New York at $128.8 million, and New Jersey with $120.5 million brought in more money. The MEA brought in $623.90 per member it represents, making...

In three weeks, six L.A. Unified employees have been booked on suspicion of sex-related crimes. The Miramonte episode has sparked some people to come forward and others to be more watchful, police say....... [read it] ....In the past, district officials would never reveal what happened to a teacher who was dismissed or removed until they had to — they often cited the employee's privacy rights and a fear of litigation. But now, some district officials, including school board member Nury Martinez, are insisting that parents and campus colleagues have a right to know what allegedly happened.............

Wear black on Friday, February 17, 2012 to illustrate your collective mourning over the attack that has been launched against Virgnia's teachers and students by legislators with the open disrespect and disdain as demonstrated by eliminating continuing contract status for ...new teachers, an effort to diminish our pension benefits, and general underfunding of our schools resulting in too large class sizes, under resourced schools and classrooms, and salaries that lag embarrassingly below the national average in spite of the fact that Virginia is the 7th wealthiest state in the nation.

Disgraced 'ogle' teacher retires The city's king of the "rubber room" has stepped down. Disgraced educator Alan Rosenfeld, 66, retired on February 3, after a decade of milking tax payers for a $100,049-a-year salary even though he hasn't set foot in a classroom since 2001, school officials said today. The retirement came just days after the Post ran a series of stories exposing Rosenfeld, including how he was banished to a "rubber room" in 2001 for allegedly ogling eighth grade girls -- but then spent his time working on a personal real estate portfolio worth up to $10 million. An...

Image from the LGBT "Welcoming Schools" capaign The Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual advocacy group, has produced a “professional development film” through its Welcoming Schools project for school staff and parents that features 6- to 12-year-olds talking about gays and lesbians. The film is called “What Do You Know? Six to Twelve Year Olds Talk about Gays and Lesbians," and it "features students from Massachusetts and Alabama discussing what they know about gay men and lesbians, what they hear at school, and what they’d like teachers to do,” states the Welcoming Schools Web site. The Web site has a...

By the time they leave elementary school, children should be able to “define sexual orientation,” and by the eighth grade be able to “define emergency contraception and its use,” according to a report containing controversial new recommendations for sex education in U.S. public schools. “Ideally, comprehensive sexuality education should start in kindergarten and continue through 12th grade,” says the “National Sexuality Education Standards” report, drawn up by a range of advocates, academics and public education officials. The Future of Sex Education (FoSE), an initiative started by sex education advocates, developed the standards “to create a strategic plan for sexuality education...

Kindergarten through 2nd grade. That’s the grade at which the National Education Association (NEA), the Future of Sex Education Initiative and a coalition of sex-ed groups want children to start learning the names of body parts and alternative family structures.The recommendations are outlined in the National Sexuality Education Standards released on Monday to school districts nationwide. Although they are non-binding, having the weight of the NEA behind the recommendations could give them the gravitas needed to quickly — and quietly — be implemented around the country.CitizenLink Education Analyst Candi Cushman says it’s important for parents to understand that this is...

Third graders in in Gwinnett County, Ga., were given math homework Wednesday that asked questions about slavery and beatings. Christopher Braxton told ABC News affiliate WSB-TV in Atlanta that he couldn't believe the assignment his 8-year-old son brought home from of Beaver Ridge Elementary school in Norcross. "It kind of blew me away," Braxton said. "Do you see what I see? Do you really see what I see? He's not answering this question." The question read, "Each tree had 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?" Another math problem read, "If Frederick...

Comparatively speaking, the United States does not starve its education system of revenue. The U.S. is one of the leaders in spending on Education, and yet it's schools are rated "average" by international bodies.  The three-yearly OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, which compares the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in 70 countries around the world, ranked the United States 14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics.Worse, out of 34 OECD countries, only 8 have a lower high school graduation rate. The United States' education outcomes most resemble...

(Madison, WI) – In 2011, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker(R) served as the embodiment of the state by state battle to balance budgets and the best symbol of the struggle between the two political parties about how best to meet those fiscal challenges. His first year will extend well into his second year, quite likely culminating in a recall election to remove him from office. He has dominated the political debate on both sides. Defining the issues. He is cited by both Democrats and Republicans as the best of example of what is wrong, or what is right with a conservative...

Full Headline: Dept. of Labor: Public School Teachers Are Highest Paid State Workers; Compensation Doubles the Average in Private Industry Public school teachers receive greater average hourly compensation in wages and benefits than any other group of state and local government workers and receive more than twice as much in average hourly wages and benefits as workers in private industry, according to a new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Public primary, secondary and special education teachers are paid an average of $56.59 per hour in combined wages and benefits, BLS said in the report released last week. That...