Tom Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, gave a speech last week on the “State of American Business,” in which he described the Chamber’s views and plans on education: The first big issue centers on the American workforce. We must have a steady supply of talented and hard-working people to do the work […]
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, along with the Secretaries of Labor and Commerce, recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the Swiss government to collaborate in the area of workforce development. Secretary DeVos visited Switzerland in June of this year and was highly complementary of their school-to-work (STW) system, saying that there was much […]
This article was originally posted at Townhall. Most public schools are still afflicted with the Common Core national standards. Paid advocates such as the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation continue to push Common Core despite overwhelming evidence of the slow-motion train wreck that has resulted – reduced student achievement by almost every metric. Fordham refuses even to acknowledge the bad news, much less […]
The 2018 midterm elections are (almost) now in the books. Here is a brief review of the education outcomes relating to Common Core, Congress and FedEd, school funding, and school choice: Common Core There is much new data and analysis coming out about falling ACT scores under Common Core, the twin dangers of Common Core […]
ACT, the publisher of one of the two most often used college entrance exams in the nation, recently released a major report, “The Condition of College and Career Readiness – National 2018,” that is another stunning indictment of the Common Core standards. Proponents of Common Core — the ones that forced acceptance of the standards […]
A thorough new white paper from the Pioneer Institute titled “Common Core, School Choice and Rethinking Standards-Based Reform” expertly discusses the mountain of evidence showing the flaws and failures of the Common Core standards and their aligned curriculum, as well as how damaging the centralized standards reform movement is to school choice. The report is […]
This article was originally posted at Townhall. Proponents of the failed and destructive Common Core experiment refuse to let it go. Bill Gates, who funded a large chunk of Common Core development and marketing despite knowing essentially nothing about education, has yet to admit that it simply didn’t work out. Gates apparently believes there’s nothing wrong with Common […]
Although many factors are involved, an encouraging trend for parents and grassroots activists is emerging in this 2018 Republican gubernatorial primary season. Those candidates listening to parents by opposing Common Core and federal intrusion into education have defeated or are leading establishment, pro-Common Core candidates nearly across the board. Here are three of the most […]
Last week, Politico’s Morning Education discussed how the Preschool Development Grants started under the Obama administration for four-year-olds were adding thousands of new early childhood slots around the nation. The report also mentioned, “States also used funding from the program to align roughly 25,000 preschool slots to federal early learning standards.” Politico based their reporting […]
This article was originally posted at The Hill and co-authored by Emmett McGroarty, a senior fellow at the American Principles Project. Since the Common Core national standards were dumped on American schools beginning in 2010, national and state education officials have largely either ignored or belittled parental concerns about the resulting deterioration of education. The establishmentarians […]
Progressives in both parties are continuing to use the government-created problem of fatherless poor and minority families to peddle their schemes of expanding the role of government-as-parent yet again to create more preschool and home visiting programs. The Problem with Government Preschool Take, for example, Mississippi school superintendent Dr. Carey Wright (see here for her past exploits), […]
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos gave an interesting speech to the American Enterprise Institute last week. In some parts, it contained rhetoric that skeptical conservatives have been waiting to hear. Yet, other parts toed the corporate-establishment, ed-tech, education-as-workforce-prep line that previous administrations of both parties have pursued. Here is a brief review. The Positives First, […]
This article was originally posted at The American Spectator and co-authored by Emmett McGroarty, a senior fellow at the American Principles Project. In 2013 Michael Cohen of Achieve, Inc. (an organization integral to developing and marketing the Common Core national standards) testified in New York that Common Core is a long-term education experiment on our children: “The full effects… […]
In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI said, “The spiritual crisis overtaking the West is the most serious since the fall of the Roman Empire near the end of the 5th Century.” Two hundred years ago, 85 percent of the population regularly attended church. That number has dwindled to about 20 percent today. It doesn’t take a […]
Since her confirmation in February of this year, Betsy DeVos has had a hard time finding her footing as America’s newest Education Secretary — a situation made so obvious in her recent Politico profile that Salon magazine immediately hit the presses to posit her early departure with its initial headline, “DeVos Expected To Resign.” In […]
One commonly used definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Bill Gates, the billionaire education philanthropist, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars remaking education according to his philosophy but exempting his own children from his “reforms.” He apparently sees that definition applying only to mere mortals […]
The radical Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) just can’t leave conservatives alone. Already under fire for their thoroughly discredited and bogus “hate watch” list, the left-wing group recently included former CIA analyst Stella Morabito and I as part of a recent “anti-LGBT roundup” in which they addressed our participation in an upcoming Child Protection League fundraising event […]
There is a bill awaiting the 115th United States Congress, H.R. 899, which calls for an end to our dreadful U.S. Department of Education. The elegant simplicity of this bill is obvious. H.R. 899 is stated in its entirety as: “The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2018.” If brevity is indeed the […]
Jane Robbins recently did an excellent job of describing the “government-sponsored personality manipulation” likely coming to a school near you. It is now time to look at the details of the federally-funded means for accomplishing this Orwellian effort. The program is called PBIS, Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports. This benignly named program has been used […]
Recent research shows the average 12th grader reads at a 7th grade level. This finding isn’t terribly surprising. According to Renaissance Learning, developer of the popular Accelerated Reader, in 2015-16, the most frequently tested fiction book for grades three through seven was Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Categorizing the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series […]