Earlier this week, Rev. James Meeks announced on on WLS 890 AM that he had been chosen by Governor Bruce Rauner to be the new chairman of the State Board of Education. During the interview Tuesday morning, Rev. Meeks’ said, “We have to have a Common Core Curriculum in the state of Illinois.”
Education · Featured · Podcast
Joy Pullmann, managing editor at The Federalist and education research fellow at the Heartland Institute discusses some of the top education policy stories of 2014 with Heather Kays, managing editor of School Reform News. Pullmann and Kays also discuss what’s to come in 2015.
Education · Featured · Podcast
Paul Molloy host of Freedom Works, The Paul Molloy Show on Tantalk1340 in Florida interviewed School Reform News Managing Editor Heather Kays. Molloy and Kays discuss possible presidential hopeful Jeb Bush’s defense of Common Core and the many problems related to the Common Core standards. Kays addresses criticism against politicians who have changed their minds regarding the standards.
Budgets/Taxes · Education · Featured · Government · Internet/Telecom · Regulation
Isn’t Congress due the same deference from the FCC that the FCC expects from the courts?
Will the FCC defer to the new Congress for a reasonable period of time so it can pass consensus on net neutrality legislation?
Reminiscent of the late Rodney Dangerfield’s lament, America’s network of school buses get “no respect.”
The new “framework” for the teaching of AP history, studied by thousands of America’s top-performing high-school students, emphasizes oppressors and exploiters while scant attention is given to liberators and pioneers. Such slanted teaching is certain to produce a new generation of left-leaning citizens.
Parents and students should be treated more like customers of a service business, with private schools competing to do the best job possible for each child. Not only would schools be run more efficiently with little or no bureaucracy, but they would be responsive to their customers: parents and teachers.
The heat on Common Core was high this spring, but I predict it will be even higher come state legislative sessions this January. It’s the last year states can conceivably avoid joining the train wreck that will be Common Core tests, which are due to replace state tests in March and following. But the earnest moms and dads that comprise the Common Core grassroots have been largely burned by their representatives, who either have responded to serious arguments by relabeling Common Core or diverting blame for it. They’re politicians, man, not representatives.
Education · Environment/Energy · Featured
Widening efforts to blame neonicotinoid pesticides for honeybee “colony collapse disorder” and other “beepocalypse” problems have taken a fascinating turn.
Insisting that scientific evidence shows a clear link between neonics and honeybee population declines, EU anti-insecticide campaigners persuaded the European Union to impose a two-year ban on using the chemicals. Farm organizations and the Union’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Department unsuccessfully opposed the ban, arguing that evidence for a link is not persuasive, and actual field studies in Canada and elsewhere have found little risk to bees from the pesticides.
According to some activists, charter schools are the villain in the nation’s current education narrative.
Economics · Education · Featured
Obviously, Liberals have a very different philosophy than Conservatives. That is why a growing number of people are concerned about the unusual and disproportionate inequality that exists between Liberal professors and Conservative professors within America’s colleges and universities today. When there is an inequality as great as nine liberal professors to one Conservative professor in a college, it is impossible to believe the students are receiving a fair and balanced education. Parents and the public are seeking answers as to why the imbalance exists and calling upon universities to examine how to create a more balanced environment and learning experience for their children.
How has Shimer College done since the inmates took it over? A ranking of colleges published by Washington Monthly in October — based on cost of tuition, student indebtedness, and graduation rates and adjusted for the percentage of students who are minority or low-income — ranked Shimer the worst college in America.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Common Core has revealed the rot inherent in our government and education system. And Bill Bennett can’t tell at all.
Economics · Education · Featured · Government
What has happened to universities and colleges, school that once identified themselves as sanctuaries for free speech, tolerance, and diversity? Why did they abandon that excellent goal as an open market place for thought and ideas, to become instead institutions of indoctrination to a specific political viewpoint?
Follow the money. It all ends up in the hands of a very few. Pearson Foundation is getting the contracts because of its partnership with the Bill Gates Foundation. Greed,[…]
Controversy continues over the adoption of new schoolbooks in Texas, as environmental lobbyists fight to have sound science concerning global warming removed from the curriculum. With the ability to influence millions of schoolchildren regarding climate change, environmental alarmists are trying to ensure their message is the only one heard.
Education · Featured · Science
On October 29, a group of Amherst College faculty members sent an open letter to the president of the college and the chairman of the board of trustees urging them to “move toward divesting the college of holdings in those corporations that are committed to fossil fuel extraction to the exclusion of making serious investments in renewable energy.” Regrettably, the faculty members’ letter made several false and malicious claims about The Heartland Institute, which we reply to in the letter below.
Education · Environment/Energy
The Texas State Board of Education (TSBOE) is in the process of adopting new social studies and history textbooks. Once approved, the books will likely be used in schools for more than a decade, and because Texas is a huge market for textbooks, other states often adopt the choices Texas determines, thus making this decision particularly influential.
Only one week after Election Day, Washington, DC’s focus has shifted from furious campaigning to National Education Week and the Thought Leader Summit (held from Nov. 10–13), “a gathering of the leaders from education, business, and government who define and shape trends in public and private education.”
Education, business, and government leaders are gathering this week in Washington, DC to discuss the future of American education at the Thought Leader Summit (held from Nov. 10–13), an event held as a part of the National Education Initiative. Among the many topics that will be discussed is the advancement of online education, a technological gift that could save conservatism in America.
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