“Does going to college make students better-educated citizens? A new study of more than 14,000 randomly selected college students from across the country concludes that the answer is often no. Not only did many respondents at the 50 participating colleges fail to answer half of the basic civics questions correctly, but at such elite […]
“Is there anything the general public can do about the politically correct academy? In a word, yes. It’s easy to write off the academy as hopeless. Take the Larry Summers affair. Although the public, and Harvard’s own students, overwhelmingly supported Summers, the tenured faculty won that battle. The professors held the power, and by definition, […]
“Alina Guerrero, a fourth-grader at the Amistad Dual Language School in northern Manhattan is among tens of thousands of immigrant children around the country who have been turned into political pawns as a result of the federal No Child Left Behind law. This summer, Department of Education officials in Washington ordered all public schools to […]
“With the recent passage of the Educational Opportunities Act in Iowa and the start of its implementation, school choice is receiving a great deal of attention in our state. The act offers tax credits to donors who fund scholarships that will allow low-income students to attend private schools. Unfortunately, a Sept. 6 Rekha Basu column […]
“Kindergarten classes at 10 Pinellas elementary schools would be predominantly black right now if not for rules requiring desegregation. The same would be true for the sixth-grade classes at three middle schools and the ninth-grade classes at two high schools. That scenario reflects the preferences of parents who participated in choice for this school year. […]
“The current school-choice system and transportation plan for Seattle Public Schools are overly complicated and costly, and need updating, School Board members agreed Wednesday. But any major changes are at least two years away — and board members cautioned that saving money won’t be their only priority when they look at revamping the plans. Chief […]
“A federal judge Wednesday dismissed much of Connecticut’s argument for challenging a controversial U.S. government school reform law but left open one avenue for the state’s lawsuit to continue. U.S. District Judge Mark R. Kravitz dismissed three of the four counts in Connecticut’s complaint that the 4-year-old No Child Left Behind Act unfairly costs state […]
“Detroit and some of the state’s older school districts may be struggling when it comes to keeping students, but the number of children in Michigan charter schools seems to keep growing. Although it’s not known how many students are in charter schools this year, the number is believed to be nearing 100,000, compared with about […]
“Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida has long played the dutiful younger brother. Well before President Bush signed his No Child Left Behind law, Jeb Bush poured his own ideas into a school improvement program for Florida. Over the years since, Governor Bush has mostly held his tongue about the president’s very different law, even as […]
I apologize for the intermittence of recent updates — technical difficulties of a mysterious nature have been intermittently preventing me from posting. This week’s editorial is short and sweet. I could reduce it to one word: Winterize! But then it would be a headline, not an editorial, right?
Here in St. Louis, the leaves are starting […]
