Free Republic

The numbers keep getting worse for the nation’s education system. In the 2010-11 academic year, 48 percent of public schools - a record high - failed to meet the “adequate yearly progress” benchmarks established by the No Child Left Behind act, according to a new study by the Center on Education Policy, a nonpartisan think tank. D.C. Public Schools ranked near the bottom, with 87 percent failing to clear the bar, the report says. Only Missouri was worse, with 88 percent of its schools falling short. Wisconsin schools performed the best, with 11 percent missing the mark. In Maryland and...

Parents of Emerson Elementary in Compton, California, are up in arms over the school’s decision to invite former porn star Sasha Grey to read to a group of first and third-grade students, at an National Education Association-sponsored event called Read Across America. TMZ obtained photos of the event, but when they contacted school administrators, they were less than forthcoming about the decision to invite the winner of the 2010 AVN award for best anal sex scene.  The award is sponsored and presented by the adult video industry trade magazine Adult Video News.The school district flatly denied inviting the former porn...

Leave it to right-wing think tanks to tell the world that teachers are overpaid. Right wingers hate unions and they hate paying public employees, so keep that in mind as you try to digest recent surveys from The American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation that say teachers just make too much money.

<p>School spending has gone through the roof and test scores are flat.</p> <p>While most every other service in life has gotten faster, better, and cheaper, one of the most important things we buy -- education -- has remained completely stagnant, unchanged since we started measuring it in 1970.</p>

Colorado Says Occupy This The election results were "a killing field for tax measures." Voters rejected a higher income and sales tax earmarked for education. By PAUL A. GIGOT If the income-redistribution sentiments of "Occupy Wall Street" are sweeping the nation, you wouldn't know it from the election results in the presidential swing state of Colorado Tuesday night. The results were "a killing field for tax measures," as the Denver Post described it. By nearly 2 to 1, voters statewide rejected a higher income and sales tax earmarked for education. Supporters had pitched the tax hikes as "temporary" to help...

Education Secretary Arne Duncan thinks public-school teachers are “desperately underpaid” and has called for doubling teacher salaries. In a new paper co-authored with Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation, I look into whether teachers really are desperately underpaid, or underpaid at all. Jason and I find that the conventional wisdom is far off the truth. At first glance, public-school teachers definitely look underpaid. According to Census data, teachers receive salaries around 20 percent lower than similarly educated private-sector workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says teachers’ benefits are about the same as benefits in the private sector. But both the...

The National Education Association (NEA), the largest labor union in the country, offered a $5,000 Learning and Leadership Grant to two Wisconsin teachers who intended to use the funds to “help first and second grade students” become “activists.” The description of the grant for teachers Andrea Burmesch and Tara Krueger of Muskego Elementary read: Ms. Burmesch and a team of colleagues will develop a critical literacy inquiry based unit of study to help their first and second grade students understand the role that power plays in their lives. The teachers will learn how visual literacy and technology, particularly website and...

SPRINGFIELD —— Reg Weaver receives a state pension of $242,657 a year, not because it's based on his last salary as a teacher, but because he gets to count the $300,000-plus check he made as president of the National Education Association.It's one of the highest pensions paid by the heavily indebted Illinois Teachers' Retirement System.Weaver, whose last salary as a south suburban teacher was $60,000, is one of 116 active and inactive members of the Teachers' Retirement System who can base their retirement income on their salaries and service in the National Education Association, the Illinois Education Association, the Illinois...

About half of Illinois public high school students flunked state exams in reading, math and science this year, the worst performance in the history of the 11th-grade Prairie State Achievement Examination, statewide test results show. The record-low results, scheduled to be released Thursday, come after Illinois closed loopholes that kept academically weak juniors from taking the exams, a practice revealed in a 2009 Tribune analysis. Some local school officials attributed their declines in part to the larger testing pool that included less-prepared students. At the same time, grade schools posted the highest passing rate in a decade this year —...

he AFL-CIO announced it has invested  more than $150 million in job-creating infrastructure projects and registered 8,000 more apprenticeships in clean energy training. During the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) meeting in Chicago last June, the AFL-CIO outlined plans to work with member unions, pension funds, investment professionals and the government to invest at least $10 billion in job-creating infrastructure projects. The federation also committed to invest at least $20 million in specific energy retrofits over the next year, to retrofit our headquarters building, and to train tens of thousands of workers in the skills necessary to work on 21st century infrastructure.Here’s what has been...

Wash. teachers defy orders and continue to strikeBy DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP Associated Press Originally published Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 9:41 AM TACOMA, Wash. — As teachers in Washington state's third-largest school district defy a judge's order and continue to strike, negotiators for the schools, the teachers union and a state mediator will meet to restart contract talks. **SNIP** Pierce County Superior Court Judge Bryan Chushcoff also ordered both the union and the school district to return to collective bargaining as soon as possible. A bargaining session was scheduled for Thursday afternoon, Wood said. "I want you to all talk,...

Ridiculously false choices and rhetoric ruled the evening when the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers hosted a closed-media conference call with Vice President Joe Biden to inform their members about the latest government school and teachers’ union bailout. In a recording obtained exclusively by PublicSchoolSpending.com, Biden explained the administration is seeking to spend $30 billion to create a “Teacher Layoff Prevention Fund.”  He also said that many schools today are “deciding whether or not to heat the school or keep a teacher.” Like school stimuli-past, Biden said schools would not be able to bank the money,...

Municipal bonds have always been synonymous with tax-free income. That would end if President Obama gets his way. Under the jobs bill the President sent to Congress Monday, high-income individuals and families would no longer receive interest from state and municipal bonds free completely from federal income taxes, beginning in 2013. The legislation would also reduce the value of tax deductions for taxpayers in the highest bracket. Specifically, individuals earning over $200,000 and families earning over $250,000 would effectively have the value of tax breaks against the top 35% bracket lowered to the 28% bracket.

There has been a good deal of hand-wringing over the state of our nation's schools -- whether at the elementary, the secondary, or the University level. And instead of a circular firing squad so beloved of the Republican Party, those closest to the situation are involved in an almost unfathomable degree of both psychological projection and transferrence, coupled with a goodly measure of 1984-style groupthink, in which they chant in unison, "You can't blame us!" In a limited sense, this is true: in the cloud-cuckoo land of government largesse and union employment, punching the clock, obeying the party line, and...

Harbor Beach Community Schools paid one teacher tens of thousands of dollars to leave, despite the teacher getting caught kissing some students and head-locking one after being confronted for his behavior. Dearborn Public Schools paid four teachers a total of $197,353 to get rid of them after charges of sexual misconduct and possession of illegal substances on school grounds. Gladwin Community Schools has dished out about $40,000 thus far in a legal case against a kindergarten teacher arraigned on charges of furnishing alcohol for minors. These are a few of at least 156 tenure cases brought by Michigan public school...

You wouldn't think that Erie County, Pa., epitomizes the least visible yet most insidious aspect of the nation's pension crisis. With just 280,566 residents, the county is better known for its once-grand status as being the hub between the Rust Belt metropolises of Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Buffalo, for the sandy Presque Island State Park, and for being the site of one of the few battles won by the Americans in the War of 1812. But these days, Erie County taxpayers are learning plenty about the high cost of pension and retiree healthcare deals struck over the past five decades by...

It looks like the National Education Association is not putting its money where its mouth is. In its mission statement, the nation’s largest teachers union asserts that “we will focus the energy and resources of our 3.2 million members on improving the quality of teaching, increasing student achievement and making schools safer, better places to learn.” But a secret union document reveals that the NEA’s commitment to “improv(ing) teaching and learning” works out to a paltry $7.44 per member every year. This is according to a document obtained from an internal source of the Indiana State Teachers Association, one of...

It looks like the National Education Association is not putting its money where its mouth is. In its mission statement, the nation’s largest teachers union asserts that “we will focus the energy and resources of our 3.2 million members on improving the quality of teaching, increasing student achievement and making schools safer, better places to learn.” But a secret union document reveals that the NEA’s commitment to “improv(ing) teaching and learning” works out to a paltry $7.44 per member every year. This is according to a document obtained from an internal source of the Indiana State Teachers Association, one of...

***VIDEO AT LINK*** Dr. Moe: “If you stand up for kids, you have to oppose this [collective bargaining] Schools get organized by the adults on the basis of interests and concerns that have nothing to do with kids. So, why would you expect that system to work?” As students head back to school, it is a good time to reflect on why education is failing and continues to fail. Terry Moe, Chairman of the Political Science Department at Stanford, provides a dispassionate and extensively researched book, Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools, which should become a useful and...

Teacher cheating scandal is symptom of public schools’ failureIf the disturbing documentary “Waiting for Superman” didn’t convince you that a massive overhaul of the public education system is necessary, maybe the massive cheating scandal erupting in the Atlanta public school system will. First off, there is no argument that public education in America is a complete and total disaster. Our children routinely score at the bottom of the barrel in math, science and geography, while more than 50 percent of other children drop out of high school in some districts. It’s not that our children are dumb, but rather that...