A Busy Executive’s Guide To Why Public Schools Are Dysfunctional

The bleak statistics are well known. This country has 50 million functional illiterates. We don’t compete well on international tests. Students reach college not knowing what 7 x 8 is. The Pentagon complains constantly that more than half of our teenagers are not fit for military service. Major corporations spend billions on remedial classes, teaching adults basic information they should learn during their school years. Why, why, why? It’s all very mystifying for most people. What is so difficult about teaching kids... Read article

Rolling Back Barack

One of the country’s best known handicappers, Wayne Allyn Root, predicted several months ago that Mitt Romney would win the presidency by a landslide. The first debate suggested that Root might be right. A month ago Rush Limbaugh discussed how the Left would deal with such a defeat. Rush predicted the Left would ruthlessly disown Obama, toss him rudely under the bus, and focus on saving Liberalism. The Left would insist that their own ideas were doubleplus good. Any bad results were entirely Obama’s fault. Hopefully,... Read article

The New York Times Won’t Report The News

The New York Times (and liberal media generally) have two ways of dealing with news they don’t like. Stories can be ingeniously “spun” so their significance is dimmed. The  main facts might be mentioned; but the emphasis is expertly shifted and important details are placed toward the end. Opposing testimony is featured throughout. The “spun” story, a murmur of its prior self, is then buried on a back page. A more radical, more Orwellian technique is to pretend that the story never happened. News is thus “disappeared.”... Read article

VIP’s Criticize Obama

President Obama seems to inspire a historically high level of criticism and suspicion, for example: Thomas Sowell, author and columnist, says: “Barack Obama is one of those people who are often wrong but never in doubt.” Headline on European Union Times site says: “French Leader Sarkozy Slams Obama, Warns He Might Be Insane.” ad for $40? Bettina Viviano, Hollywood producer who worked for Hillary in 2008 campaign, says, “We were always told that Bill was going to tell the truth [about Obama’s ineligibility]…... Read article

Teachers: Are You Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?

Why do we have such depressing education statistics? One reason is that ed schools teach a lot of Mickey Mouse and skimp on what teachers need to know. Teachers are specifically told not to do all the obvious things that teachers have traditionally done through the centuries. There’s a lot of talk about being more passive, about becoming a guide or facilitator. Did anybody tell you to learn a lot and take charge of your classroom? (You probably weren’t even required to major in the subjects you will teach — surely... Read article

Progressive Education’s War On Knowledge

An educational futurist, in a video on Edutopia, objects to the teaching of data and information. That’s the sort of thing, he sniffs, that Google can find. The futurist wants a high-tech classroom where students work only on sophisticated projects, such as “Is there life on Mars?” The futurist scorns traditional ways of teaching. For one thing, teachers wasted a lot of time on trivial stuff. His voice almost shakes with incredulity: “Teaching kids that ‘In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue’–why on earth... Read article

The Real Problem In Our Public Schools

Don’t trust what you see in the media about education. Almost every discussion is a distraction or a lie. School size, class size, the place of unions, teacher training, vouchers, charter schools, budgets — there are a lot of things that people argue about. Everybody has a theory; every parent has a horror story. But these debates don’t seem to advance much from year to year. You can probably go around the country and find good schools on both sides of these issues. One school does X; the next school doesn’t... Read article

The Case Against Common Core Curriculum

Race to the Top?? Sounds more like continued slide to the bottom. You think the public schools are mediocre now? You ain’t seen nothing yet. Here is one researcher’s conclusion: the much ballyhooed Common Core Curriculum is merely new jargon and marketing for all the same old, same old we ought to avoid. Namely, diminished academic content and rigor, but now locked in place by federal control. It’s a sad spectacle, the government throwing money at the states by way of making them give up their own standards... Read article

If Public Schools Were A Business, All of Top Management Would Be Fired

If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be comical. Our schools seem to be run by Italian cruise ship captains. In a society, where everyone is immersed in language and surrounded by words, we somehow manage to have an illiteracy crisis. Recent government tests show that two-thirds of the kids entering middle school are sub-literate. This country has 50 million functional illiterates. Furthermore, SAT scores are falling. American students don’t compete well against students from other countries, even though we spend vastly... Read article

The Truth About Education? You Can’t Handle The Truth

Our Education Establishment, in plain sight, is doing a second-rate job. Who, we should ask, is in charge of this train wreck, and what motivates them? First, let’s add up the evidence. The fifty million functional illiterates. The one million dyslexics. The poor performance against international competition, despite our huge budgets. The ignorance of average Americans about basic geographical, historical, and scientific information. SAT scores slide; kids cannot multiply and divide; students reach college not knowing... Read article

Let’s Get Busy Saving The Public Schools

Many pundits note that our public schools are sunk in mediocrity. Bill Gates concluded the schools are so bad they threaten the country’s economic future. Less often noted is the obtuseness of so much that goes on in the schools. Professors of education seem to prefer flimsy theories and counter-productive methods. Then, to excuse the pervasive failure, the elite educators blame parents, kids, TV, popular culture, computers, and everything but their theories. Rooting out all these bad ideas is the simplest, most inexpensive... Read article