As numerous states — most prominently Wisconsin and Ohio — consider curtailing the collective bargaining rights of their workers, the debate has largely focused on money and power. If public employee unions are de-authorized or restricted, what impact will that have on state budgets? Tax rates? Political contests? When it comes to teachers, however, this discussion bypasses a crucial question: What is the impact of collective bargaining on students? A study just published in the Yale Law Journal, which looks at recent, real-life experience in the state of New Mexico, provides a ... Read More
Science Leaches Out of Science Class
February 1, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama urged Americans to “win the future” through a new dedication to the science and technology education that could help the United States “out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world.” He conjured an America where today’s fifth-graders could become the globe’s go-to experts in solar engineering, high-speed rail design and supercomputer construction. But in a sign of the distance between that universe and the one Americans really live in, it turns out many public school students aren’t even properly ... Read More
Minority Teachers: Hard to Get and Hard to Keep
December 5, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
"Our teachers should be excellent, and they should look like America,” said the Secretary of Education in 1998, during the administration of President Bill Clinton. It was an admirable goal, backed by federal money, yet it is still out of reach today despite a ballooning number of minority teachers in the workplace. Too many are going in one door and out the other, researchers say. “Teachers of color are literally at risk: They’re leaving, and they’re leaving in droves,” said Betty Achinstein, a researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the co-author of ... Read More
Avoiding Teacher Layoffs With an Education Bailout
May 4, 2010 • By • 3 Comments
The American Association of School Administrators commemorated National Teacher Day today with a depressing announcement, the result of its latest survey of school superintendents. About 275,000 of the teachers and support staff we're all supposed to be thanking this week are likely to face layoffs before the coming school year. What they need, more than apples, cookies or construction-paper cards: About $23 billion. It's "pink slip season" in public education, and in a quirk of recession economics, school districts across the country are on the verge of a crisis dramatically worse today ... Read More
What Are American Schools Doing Right?
February 4, 2009 • By • 1 Comment
We hear it over and over again: The public education system in the United States is broken. Smart teachers burn out and leave early. The achievement gap between poor minority students and their affluent white peers won't budge. America is losing ground to other developed nations on test scores. By now, anyone who has ever read a newspaper — assuming, alarmists may add, that you can read at all — understands that the American public education system is rife with problems. But, surely, some practices work. Isn't there a way to look at examples of success and replicate them? With these ... Read More
