by David Safier It does my heart good to see Matthew Ladner of the Goldwater Institute has such faith in the possibilities of traditional public schools. This is the second or third time in recent months he's praised the schools for raising student test scores, and especially for increasing the scores of Hispanics. Ladner is … Read more
by David Safier If you have some time on your hands and want to learn more about any college level subject imaginable, you can watch complete class lectures by some of the country's best and most popular profs, for free, thanks to some very generous financial backers. Open course material on the Internet may be … Read more
by David Safier On the one hand, Arizona exercises far too little oversight of its charter schools. The good schools don't need much in the way of oversight, but charters that slight the students through poor educational practices, misuse of funds or both need to be improved or shut down. And by far the worst … Read more
by David Safier I finally got around to watching last week's debate on Prop 100, which aired on KUAT, between Ann-Eve Pederson from the Arizona Education Network and Farrell Quinlan, the Arizona State Director of the National Federation of Independent Businesses. I'm not going to comment on the debate itself except to say Pederson handled … Read more
by David Safier This is a shocker to me. Florida's legislature passed a bill that "would have abolished tenure for new teachers and instituted strict merit pay guidelines," which teachers and many others oppose mightily. And Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed it. The bill is similar to the one Arizona teachers and others are fighting that … Read more