Yesterday, President Obama traveled to New Mexico to deliver remarks on education at the home of a local Albuquerque family. According to the Associated Press, “Obama argued that Republicans would cut education spending to pay for tax cuts for the rich.” While the politics of Obama’s assertion can be left to debate by Members of Congress, it is clear that over the years, conservatives have pushed for policies that better target educational dollars. Instead of just throwing more money into the monolithic public education system, which in many instances ends …
NBC News is on Day Two of its week-long series Education Nation. You cannot turn on any of the NBC family of networks (MSNBC, CNBC, Bravo, A&E, Telemundo, etc.) without seeing Education Secretary Arne Duncan, or some Obama administration surrogate, flacking for the President’s education agenda. There are plenty of issues the journalists at NBC could be asking about but aren’t: the silent push toward national standards, the assault on for-profit learning, the waste in education spending. But most galling is NBC’s continued refusal to ask about the Obama administration’s …
Today, the much-talked-about film Waiting for Superman will make its premier. The movie, produced by David Guggenheim, reveals the gridlock created by school district bureaucracy, apathetic teachers, and teachers’ unions. According to reviews, the movie graphically displays how a broken school system is failing America’s children, leaving them in failing schools with little hope for a promising future. Reports William McGurn in The Wall Street Journal: It’s one thing to talk about “failing schools.” It’s another to see a man standing in the hallway of Alain Leroy Locke Senior High …
The Lottery, a new documentary about charter schools in New York City, is changing the debate on parental choice in education. Madeleine Sackler, a 27 year old graduate of Duke University and creator of the film, follows 4 students who have been entered into a lottery to be selected for one of the spots at Harlem Success Academy (a transformative system of charter schools that is catching the eyes of policymakers across the country.) The film will be screened today at 5:30 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. …
The folks over at Reason.tv have produced a great video explaining how public sector unions are stifling economic recovery. It notes that unionized workers already made more than their private sector counterparts before the recession and that the pay gap has only grown since then. Government jobs don’t create wealth because all the money they spend comes from tax dollars that are taken from another part of the economy. Government union jobs are not a net gain like a private sector jobs are. With the Obama Administration hiring more and …
On Thursday, Senator Daniel Akaka [D-HI] convened an education sub-committee hearing on the state of reform in the D.C. public school system. D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee testified, and was met with both support and opposition. Over the past two years, she has brought sweeping reforms to the DCPS and has worked to reduce waste in the system. Despite her successes in a steep uphill battle, opponents of her reform efforts held signs reading “Oppose Rhee-form” outside of the committee hearing. While Rhee’s star-power garnered considerable attention during the …
General Counsel Bob Chanin explains to NEA convention why Big Labor is so powerful: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-piPkgAUo0w[/youtube]
