Free Republic

Old School Policies Challenged by: Jesse Masai, October 20, 2008 A new book, The Future of Educational Entrepreneurship: Possibilities for School Reform, is now laying out the future of educational entrepreneurship, including possibilities for school reform. In the timely volume, the American Enterprise Institute’s director of education policy, Frederick Hess, and a select team of analysts and reformers examine how to create conditions favorable to K-12 education reform. “The most intriguing reforms in K-12 education today are entrepreneurial ventures such as the New Teacher Project, New Leaders for New Schools, the KIPP Academies, and New Schools for New Orleans, which...

Barack Obama has been backing off post-partisan rhetoric on education, looking more like a stick-in-the-mud Democratic regular on schools and less like the reformer who supported test-based accountability and performance pay for teachers. The Chicagoan had bucked teachers' unions and other stodgy liberals, supporting charter schools in Illinois and mentorship programs in Washington, Josh Patashnik writes in the New Republic. But a campaign-hardened Obama is sounding more like a traditional lefty, waffling when the issues get tough and even employing an advisor who has worked to kill the avant-garde Teach for America (which subverts certification standards cherished by unions). Patashnik...

As we approach the start of another school year, it might be good to think about school reform. What follows are some ideas that do not require government action to be implemented. They only require common sense.

In their fight against school reform, organized teachers in the Aloha state are running into adversaries they probably did not anticipate—car salesmen. “The push for a rigorous, common-core curriculum did not come from the teachers’ union—who testified against the bill, nor the Board of Education, but rather from the Hawaii Automobile Dealers Association (HADA),” according to Laura Brown of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. “HADA President David Rolf testified that the reason for his organization’s push was initially the rejection of reimbursement claims for warranty work done on cars by the Detroit manufacturer, because the written claims submitted by the...

Educators who oppose standardized testing and vouchers claim to have the best interests of students at heart but it is a claim worth examining. “The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has promoted high-stakes testing for school accountability,” Monty Neill of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing writes. “Its claim was that without ‘accountability,’ the public will abandon public education, and that the use of standards and tests would lead to educational improvement.” “This was never a good argument, though it appeared to address the justifiable anger directed by racial minorities and low-income communities against second-class educational opportunities.” Fair...

Imagine taking a teaching position with no training at one of the worst urban schools in Philadelphia. Now imagine that the building was crumbling and rat infested, your 6th grade class was struggling with illiteracy, you had no textbooks, curriculum or guidance, and violence and obscenities were daily phenomena. Christina Asquith doesn’t have to imagine those things; she lived them. In 1999, with burning questions about why inner-city Philadelphia schools (and those in other cities) were failing, Asquith joined the ranks and became a teacher with no formal training at a time when the schools were desperate for them. Before...

THE PRESIDENT'S RENOVATION STRATEGY Renovation strategy? That's one word you could use. Today George Bush begins a series of speeches trying to turn more public support for the war on terror in general and the war in Iraq in particular. It's an effort to rebuild his approval numbers. We've seen this before. The public becomes restless, and George Bush launches a series of speeches about the war in Iraq. Today Bush will talk about the global war on terror at George Washington University. I'm still a supporter of the Iraqi war. I still believe that Saddam Hussein had to be...

For the last seven years as governor of Florida, I've worked with thousands of educators, policymakers, parents and students to reform public education in our state. The reality of reform is vastly different from the theory, and change is a lot harder than it looks. But there are a few rules, you might say, for real reform that make it possible. • The first rule is that when you run for office, you need to say what you're going to do and then do what you said you would. Candidates who aren't willing to take political risks won't take the...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Please direct press contacts to Dr. Hermione Z. Gringold, Assistant Vice Superintendent for Public Affairs, 1-666-834-9000, ext. 13 Taskforce to Homeschool Texas School District Administrators On Effective School Management Plantagenet, Texas/ April 15/Chistenewswire/ Plantagenet Independent School District Dr. Adolphus Reich-Neeley, chairman of the Plantagenet Independent School District School Board, and Thelma Mae Tomkins, principal of the Tomkins Home School in Muleshoe, Texas, announced today that Plantagenet ISD has accepted an offer by a multicultural homeschool taskforce led by Principal Tomkins to homeschool the Plantagenet district administrators on effective school management. “It has become apparent that Plantagenet ISD...

Reprinted from NewsMax.com The Failure of the American Education System Steve Farrell Saturday, Nov. 20, 2004 They never stop nagging. The latest and greatest on education coming out of the mouth of the Anybody But Bush Party is that “No Child Left Behind” is synonymous with “No Money Left to Pay for It.” They’re referring to unfunded mandates. Now, just in case some of you aren’t sure what that means, an unfunded mandate is when the federal government tells the states: “Here’s a new law. Comply with it or else. And oh, by the way, YOU have to pay for...

Petition drive seeks to limit sex education By JACKIE BURRELL Contra Costa Times WALNUT CREEK - The same man who led the drive to put Gov. Gray Davis' recall on the state ballot in 2003 now has received state approval to circulate petitions for a proposition to severely restrict sex education in public schools. The petition language released Wednesday by Secretary of State Kevin Shelley's office and written by Attorney General Bill Lockyer's staff is straightforward, calling for a ban on sex ed in kindergarten through sixth grade and for daily parental permission slips for older students. But the actual...

What is the worst step that's been taken on the road to American serfdom? In my view, it was allowing government to educate our children. Given that our children learn about the world from government employees, working in a government system, it's no surprise that children grow up believing: • That government is the fair and impartial arbiter, as opposed to private businessmen who act from self-interest; • That government programs actually do what they promise to do; • That the U.S. government liberated Europe and Asia in World War II; • That Franklin Roosevelt saved America from the Great...

<p>You wrote in the Monday editorial "Bush's conservative support" that "the president showed why conservatives will support him in November: Because he is one of them." Unfortunately, he is not.</p> <p>Under President Bush, the Republican Party has become the party of big government. The government has grown bigger and bigger, with more agencies, bureaucracies and enforcement programs. This president and a Republican Congress have given us an 8.2 percent annual increase in discretionary domestic spending (that's non-defense, non-entitlement), far greater than anything during the Clinton administration or any other administration since Richard Nixon's. This administration has given us the largest new entitlement program in almost four decades. Mr. Bush has yet to veto a single spending bill.</p>

A major concern about public funding of school choice is government control of private schools. “Who pays the piper calls the tune,” the argument goes. For example, in higher education, college students receiving assistance under the federal Basic Educational Opportunity Grants program (BEOG) subject the college to the provisions of Title IX, which bars sex discrimination by institutions receiving “federal financial assistance.” The U.S. Supreme Court so ruled in Grove City College v. Bell in 1984. While Grove City is accepted by many as proof that government funding leads to government control, a different perspective was provided by the late...

School Reform The U-46 Question: Which are Better, Small or Large School Districts? A group of concerned citizens have organized "Better Schools for All" with the aim of breaking up Elgin (IL) based school district U-46 into smaller, more responsive and more effective school districts. Follow this link to a statement from FTN and links to some of the research compiled by the citizens of "Better Schools For All." It is certainly no surprise that the Elgin teachers union is opposed to the break up. Teacher unions are famous for standing in the way of any institutional reform that might...

<p>Abroad, OPEC is striving to prop up the price of oil. Here at home the education monopoly is striving to hold down parents and children.</p> <p>Case in point: last week's appalling charter school debacle in Michigan.</p> <p>A charter school is a public school that is allowed to operate free of many of the restrictions and union agreements that have done so much to turn existing schools into educational quagmires.</p>

<p>Like the former Mayor of New York City, the reform-minded San Diego schools chief is a Brooklyn boy and former U.S. prosecutor. Also like Rudy, he's shown what a healthy dose of bull-headedness can do: He is undertaking what some observers believe is the most important urban school-reform effort in the country.</p>