It’s like the bad penny that keeps appearing, only it costs hundreds of millions of dollars. The city teachers union has begun pushing a new property-tax proposal tied to a union employment program. Everyone would be better off if they just stuck to teaching kids. The union’s proposal, announced with great fanfare by United Federation of Teachers boss Michael Mulgrew, is to increase property-tax receipts by placing an added burden on housing owners who do not use their city apartment as their primary residence.

*/ THE WALL STREET JOURNAL July 1, 2014 How Teachers Unions Use 'Common Core' to Undermine Reform Instituting new standards has opened the door for attempts to gut teacher evaluations and 'suspend' accountability. By ERIC A. HANUSHEK This year's battle over the introduction of Common Core standards in public schools has diverted attention from a more important but quieter battle led by teachers unions to eliminate school accountability and teacher evaluations.

Public schools are constitutionally empowered to educate our next generation, but they often stray from that path to over-emphasize the rights, pay, and benefits of their employees. In a stunningdecision, a judge in the California Superior Court has ruled that, because education is a fundamental right of California youth, the laws governing teacher tenure, teacher dismissal and rules for layoffs are unconstitutional.

Teacher tenure discussions often suggest that what is in the best interest of teachers is also in the best interest of students. But the groundbreaking decision in the Vergara case makes it clear that early, and effectively irreversible, decisions about teacher tenure have real costs for students and ultimately all of society. Ineffective faculty are a drag on colleagues and hold back the development of students.

COMMENTARY (EDUCATION WEEK, JANUARY 8, 2014) Why the U.S. Results on PISA Matter By Eric A. Hanushek In 2012, 65 nations and education systems participated in the Program for International Student Assessment. These tests, covering mathematics, science, and reading, provide direct international comparisons of skills.

There’s nothing more tiresome than when a Cabinet secretary holds a major news conference when there is no news to announce. It is like the obligatory press conference of the NFL coach of a losing team after his team has lost again. On Tuesday, the U.S. Secretary of Education billed the release of the test scores on worldwide education called the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) exams as a global event, even though the real news is that there is no news at all. The results revealed that U.S.

If the superintendents of failing school districts were as adept at fixing schools as they are at making excuses for their poor performance, America would have the best education system in the world. Instead, the just-released tests administered by the Program for International Student Assessment show that other countries are making faster progress than the United States. Our teenagers are now ranked 26th in math, 21st in science and 17th in reading. Shanghai, Singapore, South Korea, and Hong Kong are leading the pack.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL OPINION Spinning America's Report Card The latest education test scores don't match the White House rhetoric. By PAUL E. PETERSON and AND ERIC A. HANUSHEK Nov. 7, 2013 ObamaCare isn't the only thing the Obama administration is spinning these days. In education, too, accomplishments on the ground don't match the rhetoric coming out of Washington.

It's late-October, which means the Fall Classic is upon us. The baseball playoffs and their culmination in the World Series naturally emphasize competition and the ranking of teams across the major leagues. There is no confusion about how the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals are ranked. Juxtapose this with the recent spate of media stories about how our education system compares to other countries in the world. And here there is almost complete confusion about the rankings. Which is a shame, because the stakes are much higher than the World Series.

Policymakers and reform advocates alike have rallied around introducing a set of national content standards, suggesting that this will jump-start the stagnating achievement of U.S. students. As history clearly indicates, simply calling for students to know more is not the same as ensuring they will learn more.