Op-Ed
Broad economic development is in the interest of all nations. To this end, at the end of September, the United Nations ratified a new set of development goals that are designed to guide investments of both nations and international organizations. These development goals are acknowledged to be ambitious – for example, “end poverty in all its forms everywhere” by 2030. But they give short-shrift to the one action, providing quality education to all, that offers hope for achieving the many different goals. The Sustainable Development Goals of the U. N.
Ministers and education officials from a wide range of countries and international agencies are converging on Incheon in the Republic of Korea this week to discuss a new set of development goals at the World Education Forum. A draft document lays out a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which will follow on from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that included education goals to be accomplished by 2015. It is difficult to fault the SDGs as noble ambitions – end poverty everywhere, combat climate change, and more.
It is hard getting around the historic facts.
Despite decades of study and enormous effort, we know little about how to train or select high quality teachers.
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.
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.
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.
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.