Teachers

Plus, the Instaglam candidate strikes again.

In Kentucky, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Arizona, and Colorado, teachers have refused to teach until lawmakers agree to raise their pay. Some have stormed statehouses; others have closed their schools and walked out. The mainstream press affords them lavish and highly sympathetic coverage, and…

In Arizona and elsewhere, teachers aren’t getting rich—but are they as poor as the media claim?

On Thursday, President Donald Trump tossed out a characteristically jarring idea: Arm teachers. His original statements were less than clear, so at a White House public forum he clarified: “I don’t want teachers to have guns, I want certain highly adept people that understand weaponry, guns—if they…

In a recent conversation with an administrator who spent years at one of Manhattan’s most prestigious prep schools, I brought up the subject of gifted education. “I don’t know what you mean,” she responded without a trace of irony. “Every child is gifted in his or her own way.” In a culture where…

"Here, you can be the policeman." Jenna (not her real name), a 4-year-old, hands me one of the dozen small figures spread in front of her, a black woman in a police uniform. “I’m going to be the doctor,” she says as she picks up another black woman dressed in a doctor’s coat. For the next few…

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, says that she knew about Hillary Clinton's private email. Weingarten made the comment in Twitter, in response to a question from a Jeb Bush spokesman. Tim Miller, the Bush spokesman, tweeted, "@rweingarten also if not secret -…

The Democratic National Committee is already asking its supporters to "Stop Scott Walker." That's the subject of an email sent along this afternoon to supporters.

One of the Democratic party’s most loyal and powerful interest groups is, evidently, falling out of love with the Obama administration.  As Peter Sullivan of The Hill reports:

Writing in the Tennessean, a man named George Parker writes:

Two hundred North Carolina teachers are getting their hours cut due to Obamacare, WITN reports:

Campbell Brown, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

WTHI reports that local Indiana schools will be able to keep employees because of the employer mandate delay:

A press release from gun-rights group Rocky Mountain Gun Owners announces that last night it gave a firearms class to 300 teachers in Colorado. There was no cost for admission.

As Republicans discuss the future of the party, abandoning conservative values need not be part of the conversation. The party can appeal to larger segments of the electorate without forsaking core principles. One case in point is a group the party has long written off: public school teachers.

The courts are moving with customary alacrity in ruling on Mayor Rahm Emanuel's request for an injunction that would have compelled teachers to return to the classroom this morning. Not so fast, the judge said, Wednesday would be soon enough, although “by then, the legal matter could be irrelevant.…

No settlement as of Friday morning.  But ...

Like others who are convinced that reform of public education is possible, Bloomberg believes:

The strike by Chicago teachers continues. It is a hardship for parents and one more tough break for the students in Chicago's public schools, some 40 percent of whom drop out before graduating high school. Equally unfortunate are the 20 percent who do graduate but are still functionally illiterate.…

The public school teachers are going on strike in Chicago and the first worry of the people who run the city is for the safety of the children—where violence is already sky-high. The political class in Chicago has already failed in its duty to provide for the public safety. Failing to keep the…

Campbell Brown, writing for the Wall Street Journal: 

The Republican presidential candidates have spent the past year saying little about education. When they have addressed the issue, it has often been in terse calls to “turn off the lights” at the U.S. Department of Education. After a decade of runaway spending and regulations on education by both…

Teachers, more than any other feature of a school, determine how well students learn. Parents know it; research confirms it. So it might seem reasonable to expect that securing good teachers would be a well-honed art. Instead, the way we recruit, evaluate, retain, and compensate our more than 3…

Recently, Education Secretary Arne Duncan no doubt thought it radical to say that teachers should get a $60,000 yearly starting salary and top out around $150,000. He’s hoping this could shift teaching from attracting undergraduates at the middle or low ends of their classes, as it does now, to…

Test cheating has for years provided ammunition for critics of public school accountability, and the latest out of Atlanta on the country's apparently largest test-cooking scandal to date only amplifies their crows. As Mark mentioned earlier, that's the quick conclusion even "objective" reporters…

Today it was reported that a massive cheating scandal among Atlanta teachers was uncovered:

Alternate headline: "Honestly, Who Cares?"

Well, I hope you have an air-sickness bag handy. Here we have Indiana State Representative Dave Cheatham -- one of a number of Indiana Democrats that fled to Illinois to stop legislation aimed at reining in public sector unions -- comparing his total dereliction of public responsibility in order to…

Libyan rebels calling for international help.