tests

Two very different approaches to education reform began to take shape almost three decades ago, just one year apart

Even though most studies using the highest quality of research show that underprivileged children benefit academically when able to use vouchers to attend private schools, the political and educationist Left use any scrap of data.

Our country’s teachers unions are doing what they do best: throwing a childish tantrum and demanding they get more of your hard-earned tax dollars to spoil their underperforming members.

Education, they say, is the great equalizer, but in the United States, not all schools, and certainly not all educational opportunities, are created equal.

At least on Labor Day the damage they can do is limited.

Charter schools are not going to disappear overnight from the menu of education-reform options.

In the land of the free, surely choice eventually will triumph over the dreary imposed sameness of a Common Core.

America just finished celebrating Presidents Day, but in this instance, “celebrating” means something entirely different than it usually does.

For the Feds in the U.S. Education Department, ‘flexibility’ means there’s nothing left to lose.

Whatever the SEL people’s motives, their agenda is a waste of time and money, and it obviously hasn’t helped improve academic outcomes.

What does DOE do, anyway?

Think about the major policy undertakings of the Obama administration over the past six and a half years. It began with a “stimulus” that wasted trillions in the quest of generating jobs, but did little to nothing in achieving that goal. That was followed by ObamaCare which most agree has been a disaster for the nation’s healthcare sector and, finally, Common Core, a one-size-fits-all testing program intended, we were told, to improve learning standards in the nation’s schools. The only thing it has achieved is the opposition of parents, teachers unions, and entire states.

The Arizona House of Representatives Education Committee meeting on House Bill 2190 was strikingly similar to the landscape of American opinion on Common Core. Among the legislators and those who spoke at the meeting, there were some supporters, some starkly against Common Core, and some still on the fence.