Education
Believing the political worst of priests; spinning bad SAT results; the skill of being trainable; the strange market valuation in Unionland. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
Many faces of big government: standardized tests; interest group buy-offs; government as marketing practice; and the United States of Panem. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
Last week I called it “refreshing” when the news came out that Providence was looking to convert 9 public schools to public/charter hybrids. Some were understandably skeptical, but, as I responded, I was encouraged because the idea “indicates a change in mindset, even if a little bit, from the same ol’/same ol’.” Education maven Julia…
Chafee shows his bond cards, Chicago exposes a metric discord, Rhode Island misses the skills-gap/business-cost lesson, QE3 misses the inflation nebula, and college majors miss the mark. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
Refreshing (via ProJo): Providence schools superintendent…Susan Lusi, together with Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith and School Board President Keith Oliveira, are promoting the idea of district-operated charters, which would give principals greater say over what happens in the classroom without sacrificing union protection for teachers…. Given the us-versus-them attitude toward charter schools, Lusi was…
The Chicago Tribune is reporting that 25,000 public-school teachers are picketing, rather than teaching, today. The details are a bit distant from Rhode Island for a finely tuned analysis, but it’s fair to say that the union is not fighting a political class on the verge of right-to-work legislation. A significant political emphasis on “labor peace”…
At the last minute and with zero public notice or input (this session, anyway), the General Assembly in June rushed through a merger of the state’s Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education and the Board of Governors for Higher Education into an 11-member Board of Education. After days of questioning by the Providence…
This video by Evan Coyne Maloney succinctly presents a critical part of the small-government, free-market perspective on one of Rhode Island’s most intractable difficulties: The machine by which teachers’ unions turn public dollars into union-organization profits and political patronage is clear and unambiguous. One could argue that the process is for the better, for one…
In June, the North Kingstown School Committee voted to privatize the union jobs of 26 custodians. Twenty of the twenty-six were re-hired by the private company–GCA–that was brought in to take over. The committee voted to award a bid to GCA to privatize the district’s custodial department and will plan to award the contract at…
Defending the No Child Left Behind Act, on the Hoover Institution’s online Uncommon Knowledge show with Peter Robinson, President George W. Bush argued that parents need to be able to see measurements of their school districts’ achievements in order to hold them accountable. The point is well taken, but there are reasons conservatives at the time…