Free Republic

There's a reason so many people buy lottery tickets despite the astronomical odds against winning: They believe that if they just had more money, their problems would vanish. But it seldom works out. Take the way we've treated education policy. Since 1965, federal spending on education has quadrupled, from $25 billion then to an inflation-adjusted $108 billion in 2002. States have clearly won the spending lottery. But what about the students? By most measures, student achievement has remained flat during the last three decades-hardly a winning ticket. At some point, you'd think we would slow down, catch our breath and...

COLTON - Calling teaching the nation's "most important work," Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry on Thursday unveiled a $30 billion, 10-year initiative to increase teacher pay while imposing stricter standards on instructors. The Massachusetts senator, on the second day of a two-day Southern California campaign swing, called for a "new bargain" for teachers and children that would recruit and retain 500,000 teachers over four years. "Children and schools together have been abandoned by misplaced priorities," he told students, teachers and supporters at San Bernardino County's Colton High School. "And teachers, the front-line troops in too many battlegrounds in our country,...