Hollywood Steps Up in “Won’t Back Down”

A new movie opens in theaters today that couldn’t be more timely. The school year is hitting its stride, and the teachers union in Chicago just captured the national spotlight by strong-arming that city to meet its demands—at the expense of students and taxpayers.

The time is ripe for a story like Won’t Back Down, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis as mothers who can’t stand to watch their school fail any longer.

Gyllenhaal’s character is a single mom advocating for better educational opportunities for her child. Davis plays a teacher in the school who wants to improve it. This is a crucial partnership: parents and teachers working together to create a better future for students. While teachers unions have already denounced the movie, Heritage education expert Lindsey Burke has urged that criticizing unions and criticizing teachers are not one and the same. The Hertigage Foundation - Click To Read More...

It just keeps getting better doesn't It? - DSMW

Rising Black Social Pathology

Many black students are alien and hostile to the education process. They are permitted to make education impossible for other students. Their misbehavior and violence require schools to divert resources away from education and spend them on security, such as hiring school police and purchasing metal detectors, all of which does little for school safety. The violent school climate discourages the highest-skilled teachers from teaching at schools where they risk assaults, intimidation and theft. At a bare minimum, part of the solution to school violence and poor academic performance should be the expulsion of students who engage in assaults and disrespectful behavior. You say, “What’s to be done for these students?” Even if we don’t know what to do with them, how compassionate and intelligent is it to permit them to make education impossible for other students? Walter E. Williams - frontpagemag.com - Click To Read More...

The Affirmative Action President

Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages. How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful military, execute the world's most consequential job? 
 
Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a "community organizer"; a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, so often did he vote "present") ; and finally an unaccomplished single term in the United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions. He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as a legislator.
 
And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: Matt Patterson - Washington Post - Click to Read More...

National Education Association learns lesson

They had resisted it, but now the National Education Association has changed it's position on teacher evaluations. In an attempt lead rather than be steamrolled, the N.E.A. has read the writing on the wall that says teachers must be held accountable for student achievement. While they have made concessions, they have not surrendered. At this point, however most view this "change" in the N.E.A.'s stance as little more than lipservice:

There really isn’t much to hang your hat on. And with so many states and locals already out of the gate, it’s hard to see what new proposals they are bringing to the table at this point.

Civics Sorely Sought

Brought to you by The More Pictures of Kids with Flags Dept...

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor recently penned an article over at the Daily Beast that laments the shocking lack civics education in American schools. In it she cites statistics and figures that should come as no shock to many. Our children are not getting the education they deserve, and we, are thusly, not creating the future leaders that we will so desparately need. Read it for the quotes, people.

This comes on the heels of the incredibly hard to swallow Marist poll that claims:

Only 58% of residents know that the United States declared its independence in 1776.  26% are unsure, and 16% mentioned another date

Is it just us, or do polls such as these make you wonder if the participants were not just having some fun with the pollsters? It makes us incredibly sad to think otherwise.

Detroit Betting On Charter Schools For Brighter Kids

Last week a plan was unveiled in Detroit to take a third of it's failing schools and turn them into privately run charter schools.  Following the example of New Orleans after Hurricane Katerina, the Motor City will offer a marketplace for privately run charter schools where children will no longer be trapped in troubled and poorly preforming schools.

Detroit has long been plagued by some of the worst schools and lowest test scores in the nation. Of Detroit's 142 schools, 41 are under consideration for the charter program and could start as soon as this fall. Detroit wants to follow the example of New Orleans where Louisiana officials took control of the New Orleans public school system and turned it from a failing poorly run school environment run by the Louisiana's Teacher's union into a charter school system where children are scoring some of the best test scores in the country.

Why Governor Walker Can't Fire the Teachers

As the teachers' union shutdown of Wisconsin public schools continues to escalate today, many have suggested that Governor Scott Walker fire the teachers who walked off the job and replace them with those who are willing to work.  The sentiment is reminiscent of President Ronald Reagan's dismissal of hundreds of air traffic controllers in the early 1980s at the nation's airports when they went on strike. Thus, the critics ask, why can't Governor Walker fire the teachers in Wisconsin who not only walked off the job but have accepted bogus 'sick day' excuses from unscrupulous physicians so that they can continue to receive pay for the days they are out of work? Anthony Martin - Conservative Examiner - Click To Read More...

Storming the School Barricades

Who opposes charter schools?  The teacher's unions who defend the status quo in order to protect their jobs.  It's that simple.  They hire "rent-a-mobs" when needed. - DSMW