Tag: The American Spectator


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Watch: Layla Avila on Teacher Quality


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As I discussed today in my column at The American Spectator, one of the biggest challenges facing the National Education Association is the consensus that it helps perpetuate a culture…

As I discussed today in my column at The American Spectator, one of the biggest challenges facing the National Education Association is the consensus that it helps perpetuate a culture of low quality academic instruction. But it isn’t just the NEA taking the hit. As Layla Avila of The New Teacher Project explains in this 2009 testimony before the House Education and Labor Committee, school districts are also doing little to address teacher quality.

As you will see in this video, improving teacher quality isn’t just a business for Avila. It isn’t for me either. And it definitely shouldn’t be for you.

Watch more videos at Dropout Nation’s YouTube page.

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Read: Diversity Department


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What the dropout nation is reading about:

1. John Fensterwald notes some new teachers union antics on the Race to the Top front. The NEA’s California affiliate and its locals are intoning to districts that they shouldn’t sign the memorandums of understanding required to receive Race funds. Other NEA and AFT affiliates will likely take similar steps — or even

A student at the Codman Academy charter school looks at college options.

What the dropout nation is reading about:

  1. John Fensterwald notes some new teachers union antics on the Race to the Top front. The NEA’s California affiliate and its locals are intoning to districts that they shouldn’t sign the memorandums of understanding required to receive Race funds. Other NEA and AFT affiliates will likely take similar steps — or even offer their own alternate visions (as seen in Pennsylvania) as other state legislatures ignore their lobbying and entreaties.
  2. Meanwhile in Tennessee, outgoing Gov. Phil Bredeson is pushing to use student test score data in evaluating teacher performance in a special session. The state’s largest teachers union has its own thoughts. Of course.
  3. By the way, my American Spectator colleague, Joseph Lawler, offers his own skeptical thoughts about Race to the Top, looking at Massachusett’s reform efforts (which may soon sit on Gov. Deval Patrick’s desk).  In Kentucky, the Bluegrass Policy Institute takes aim at state legislators for offering a Trojan Horse version of Race reforms (HT to EducationNews). And Jamie Davis O’Leary looks at what he describes as Ohio’s embarrasing Race reform plans.
  4. James Guthrie takes some time at Education Next to assess whether school reform is actually happening. He has his answer. I would say that it is happening, but still incomplete.
  5. Monise Seward is none too pleased with the results from the Southern Education Foundation’s report on public education in the southern states. Her biggest issue: “the correlation between minority status and/or poverty with low academic expectations by the ‘experts’ and public education institutions.” The lack of discussion about over-diagnosis of black and Latino males (along with white males) is particularly jarring to her.
  6. At the New York Review of Books, David Kaiser and Lovisa Stannow read over the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics’ report on sex abuse in juvenile prisons and jails. Let’s just say that they are more shocked by the evidence than yours truly. If anything, America’s juvenile justice system is sometimes even more shameful in the pervasive neglect, abuse and denial of due process rights to children than the woeful public schools this publication covers.
  7. EdTrust releases their report on addressing achievement gaps in the age of Race to the Top and No Child. From its perspective, it isn’t enough to just close the gap. More thoughts from yours truly this weekend.
  8. Mike Antonucci notes that the president of the AFT’s California affiliate has some choice thoughts about parents who support the newly-enacted “parent trigger” in the state’s Race to the Top-driven school reforms passed yesterday. No comment.
  9. This headshaker of the week comes from the News Leader in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. And the lack of thought starts at the headline: “We can’t let charter schools steal funds from public education.” Pardon me, but public charter schools are part of the public education system, right? Or am I — and virtually everyone else covering education — just dreaming?
  10. While Michigan politicians aren’t even considering handing over control of Detroit’s traditional district to Mayor Dave Bing, Wisconsin is still picking over whether Milwaukee’s mayor will gain control over that city’s public schools. As reported in the Journal-Sentinel, one parent opposed to mayoral control asks: “How in the world does excluding parents from selecting their school leadership encourage them to participate in the education of their children?” Everyone in the hearing savvy about the politics of school boards elections likely laughed under their breath and paid him no more mind.
  11. And finally, the debate between education civil rights activists such as Gary Orfield and the charter school movement over diversity in charters is the subject of my latest National Review report. As I hinted at in the piece, it’s easy for those in the ivory tower to go on and on about diversity when they have the choice to not send their children to the nation’s worst dropout factories and academic failure mills. Integration only works if the schools are of the kind that all children can achieve their respective educational destinies.

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Read: Monday Morning Memo Edition


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What’s happening in the dropout nation: How many teachers — and schools — use the Internet to engage with parents? Jay Mathews notices that many teachers stubbornly won’t do so….

Cartoon by Gary Varvel

Cartoon by Gary Varvel

What’s happening in the dropout nation:

  1. How many teachers — and schools — use the Internet to engage with parents? Jay Mathews notices that many teachers stubbornly won’t do so. Unfortunately, as with much with the use of technology and data in education, this isn’t so shocking. It would be great to have a technology argument in education similar to what’s going on in the media business.
  2. Julia Steiny on the overuse of harsh school discipline: “Schools banish kids often and self-righteously.. It’s barbaric.”
  3. Big Ed Reform Andy #1 provides a round-up of Race to the Top news out of the Wolverine State. As I had mentioned in October, for many states, it is as much a pursuit of the dollars as it is about achieving substantial education reform. This isn’t a bad thing if the correct results are achieved.
  4. Tom Vander Ark wants the nation’s dropout factories to be fixed or replaced. Who can disagree? This should also apply to the schools that serve as feeders into them.
  5. Mark Kleiman thinks the No Child Left Behind Act’s focus on testing all students at just one point in a school year is rather inefficient; according to him, management guru W. Edwards Deming would be “appalled” by it. Maybe. But it doesn’t have to be an either-or. All students need to be tested in order to assure that each child gets the highest-quality education possible based on his needs. At the same time, sampling would also make sense to do in order to see the long-term results of broad-based reforms. How about that.
  6. School reform isn’t about popularity. Judging by the protests over the closing of Jamaica High and a few other New York City schools, Joel Klein and company know this all too well.
  7. Meanwhile in New Jersey, Gov.-elect Chris Christie is looking to expand a limited public school choice program, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. If successful, New Jersey would be following up on California’s recent expansion of a similar program.
  8. Want to learn more about how many California students aren’t making it from high school into college. Check out Measuring Success, Making Progress, which is funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (hat tip to The Educated Guess).

Subscribe to Dropout Nation’s Twitter feed to get up-to-the-minute updates.

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Pre-K Supporters and Heather Mac Donald Can Both Be Wrong…


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Especially if they are offering just one solution to the Latino achievement gap. Read more in my latest piece in The American Spectator.

Every child can learn. Even if their parents have just arrived to this country.

Every child can learn. Even if their parents have just arrived to this country.

Especially if they are offering just one solution to the Latino achievement gap. Read more in my latest piece in The American Spectator.

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The Read: Teacher Pay Edition


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My recent report on the high cost of teacher retirement packages definitely struck a cord with some folks. Reason‘s Brian Doherty notes that the teacher pension and healthcare deficits are…

New solutions must be undertaken if we want high-quality teachers in the classroom, especially in order to turn around the nation's dropout factories.

How to pay for teachers? Certainly not by maintaining the status quo.

My recent report on the high cost of teacher retirement packages definitely struck a cord with some folks. Reason‘s Brian Doherty notes that the teacher pension and healthcare deficits are part of an even-larger problem of funding civil servant retirements. Neil McCluskey at Cato offer their own thoughts, based in part on his own fine study of teacher compensation.

Meanwhile a couple of readers didn’t fully understand the argument being made — that teachers, for all their complaints about low play and demands for “respect” (i.e. money) — are among the best-compensated and best-protected professions. Think about it: The average teacher in TK states will

All that said, teacher compensation is out of whack: The lack of strong, objective annual evaluation of performance means that highly-effective teachers are paid as well as teachers lagging in subject-matter competence and instructional talent. The compensation system rewards veteran teachers, regardless of their ability, even though teachers are most likely to be effective during their early years in the classroom.

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Insight through Reporting: Teacher Pay Department


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For years, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers have complained that teachers are paid too little and deserve more money. But now, taxpayers in California, Indiana,…

For years, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers have complained that teachers are paid too little and deserve more money. But now, taxpayers in California, Indiana, Texas and other states are learning that teachers are actually are the best-compensated in the public sector — the hard way — thanks to unfunded teacher retirement and healthcare liabilities. Read more about it in my piece for The American Spectator.

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