President-elect Barack Obama is set to nominate Chicago Public School CEO Arne Duncan to be the next Secretary of Education. Mr. Duncan is known as one of a handful of innovative, reform-minded big city schools chiefs. How that will translate to the national level remains to be seen. Conservatives should …
Twelve years ago a Republican Congress and a Democrat president came together in a bipartisan fashion and passed one of the nation’s strongest charter school laws for the Washington, D.C., school system. The charter schools are publicly funded on a per-pupil basis and must accept any student who applies (if …
After D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee met with both John McCain and President-elect Barack Obama during the campaign, both candidates tried to claim her as his own. Obama even called her a “wonderful new superintendent.” But since taking over the D.C. school system in June 2007, Rhee has battled the …
Over the weekend, the Washington Post editorial page continued its support of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program—comparing President-elect Obama’s position on school vouchers with his family’s experience of choosing a school in the nation’s capital: Let’s hope the experience of moving his girls and finding the place where they will …
Blogging at The New York Times, Pacific Research Institute senior fellow Lance Izumi writes on the future of conservative education policy: Republicans have always favored, at least philosophically, decision-making at the most practical and effective level of government closest to the people. They abandoned this concept during the Bush years, …
Following Wall Street and Detroit, the nation’s governors have joined the growing line on Capitol Hill—begging Congress to save their states from looming fiscal shortfalls. The National Governors Association sent a letter to Congressional leaders asking states to be included in the next economic stimulus package. New York Governor David …
On Google’s Knol site, Heritage senior policy analyst Dan Lips and Joydeep Roy, Lawrence Mishel and Sean Corcoran from the Econimc Policy Institute and New York University are debating whether there is a place for performance-based teacher compensation in our public school system. Roy, Lawrence and Mishel argue that it’s difficult to …
The Los Angeles Times has a great story out today about how a team of public school teachers hand selected three students from low-income immigrant families and created their own nonprofit to help get the students into prestigious private high schools. The teacher’s principal, Scott Schmerelson, told the Times: “The …
Why does the left keep insisting that the only people qualified to talk to teenagers about sex is the government? Attacking Sarah Palin in today’s Washington Post Amy Schalet writes: American teenagers grow up in environments that inhibit them from making conscious choices about sex and using contraception effectively. Sarah …
Teachers unions, and the liberals that love them, got a pair of great headlines out of the USA Today this morning. “Teachers union initiates school reform plan” blares one and “Democrats, teachers unions now divided on many issues” claims the other. But if you click through either article prepare to …
