Free Republic

Federal workforce too reliant on degrees, says White House President Trump's administration wants to reform federal hiring. It complains of burdensome hiring rules and of losing candidates because filling jobs takes too long. The system "frustrates hiring managers," it said in its 2021 budget proposal. The Trump administration's proposed FY 2021 budget, which it sent to Congress Monday, calls for "transforming" federal workforce hiring. It said federal rules are making it difficult to fill high-demand jobs, especially in technology. It called the hiring and dismissal rules "lengthy and byzantine" and said "stellar performance is inadequately recognized and poor performance insufficiently...

When Ann Coulter’s most recent book, Godless, came out, all anyone heard about it was her “attack” on the four women from New Jersey. But Coulter’s book, actually has very little to say about the Jersey Girls, and much to say about a number of other topics, including education. In chapter 6: The Liberal Priesthood: Spare the Rod, Spoil the Teacher, Coulter takes on teacher indoctrination, pay, qualifications, and crime. Coulter asserts that teachers are always presumed heroes, and are spoken of in “reverential terms,” but are busy “inculcating students in the precepts of the Socialist Party of America—as understood...

THE PUBLIC EDUCATION DIVIDE/Examining low performance Numbers reveal underachieving schools in HISD spend more per student than top schools, but other factors may hold the answers When Houston school district leaders proposed bringing in new management teams for three of the city's lowest-performing high schools last month, some parents blamed the schools' plight on inferior resources and neglect. A review of Houston Independent School District financial records, however, shows the three schools spend more money per student than the city's top-performing campuses. This revelation caught at least one school board member off guard, leaving HISD decision makers to look at...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Airport security screeners perform poorly, whether they're government or privately employed workers, the Homeland Security Department's chief investigator told Congress on Thursday. The House aviation subcommittee received reports from Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin, the General Accounting Office and a private firm. The government reports found airport security is lax and all three described the Transportation Security Administration as overly bureaucratic. Ervin told lawmakers the TSA screeners and privately contracted airport workers "performed about the same, which is to say, equally poorly." The report by the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, said its conclusions were based...