Education · Featured · Government
In accordance with the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, there is no lawful role for the federal government in education, hence: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
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Education · Featured · Politics
High-profile Republicans are embracing school choice, notably in the current fast-tracked No Child Left Behind rewrite, but in such a way as to anger their most politically effective constituents.
“I don’t care if the standards are written by Aristotle, perfected by Shakespeare, approved by Newton, and endorsed by Jefferson. They are wrong because they are the thin end of an enormous federal wedge that will inevitably give you a standard to cause the textbooks to be aligned with the exams, and you will get a national curriculum which is forbidden by law that will come in by stealth and indirection.”
Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and prospective GOP presidential contender, was wrong to support Common Core. Now, on the campaign trail, he appears to be backtracking a bit. He should go all the way and admit he was wrong in the first place.
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.
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.
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.
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,[…]
The world needs more teachers like Susan Bowles. The kindergarten teacher at the Lawton Chiles Elementary School in Gainesville, Florida risked her job to stand up for what she believes in.
It has become fashionable to blame the effects of nationalizing education on anything but the national curriculum mandates and the tests that accomplish it.
It’s been a rough year for the Common Core standards. As parents, teachers, officials, and politicians learn more about the standards, more and more states are considering ways to get out of Common Core. The standards in math and reading were allegedly designed to make students career- and college-ready. Now that the public is able to see them, the standards have proven not to be what was promised. People are fighting back.
The 2010 introduction of Common Core, a set of requirements for what elementary and secondary school children should know in math and English language arts, has turned schools in one state after another into battlefields as its complexity and other factors led to protests against it. Even so, by mid-2014, a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that very nearly half of those asked about it hadn’t even heard of it. A number of states, such as Missouri, Indiana, Oklahoma, and South Carolina have withdrawn from it.
It’s difficult for social conservatives or tax-cutting supply-siders not to love Mike Pence. Only such a self-proclaimed “happy warrior for conservatism” could buck his own party, become the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, and set fundraising records while becoming the odds-on favorite to replace party darling Mitch Daniels as governor of the Hoosier State.
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