Perfect for Halloween: Haunted school, zombie principal and children in peril

By: Mike Thomas

How appropriate that I went to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios after watching the movie Won’t Back down.

They turned out to be quite similar.

HHN, as it is known, features a multitude of haunted houses inhabited by various monsters and demons.

Won’t Back Down (WBD?) features a haunted schoolhouse presided over by a zombie principal and various undead teachers. They entrap children, refuse to let them use the restroom and steal their souls, or at least their futures.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

By: Patricia Levesque

Thanks to leaders like Governor Bobby Jindal, Superintendent John White and state lawmakers, all low-income parents of K-12 students attending a C, D, or F school in Louisiana now have the opportunity to apply for a state-funded scholarship to attend a participating A or B public school or an approved private school. 

Ravitch vs Ravitch

By: Mike Thomas

In a recent speech in Chicago, Diane Ravitch pointed out that America has a stellar 90 percent graduation rate.

She notes the dropout rate is at a historical low.

She notes the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, which she calls the only valid measure of academic performance, are at their highest point in history for black, white, Hispanic and Asian students.

Schools are just doing dandy.

Baumol’s victims and the urgent need for reform (part 3)

By: Dr. Matthew Ladner

We could spend some time attempting to explain why this…

Frivolous litigation earns dunce cap

By: Mike Thomas

Florida will be the first state to litigate the effectiveness of education reform.

State Board of Education member Roberto Martinez calls it “an exercise in futility and madness and a waste of funds.”

All of which might disqualify it from other arenas, but certainly not a court of law.

Opponents of education reform filed a 2009 lawsuit accusing the state of violating a state constitutional amendment by not adequately funding a “high-quality’’ school system.

The Florida Supreme Court recently gave them the go-ahead to proceed.

Grading schools in Lake Wobegon

By: Mike Thomas

It seems that support for an A-F school grading system is contingent on the rigor of the grading system.

The harder it is to get an A, the more pushback there is from the public school bureaucracy and opponents of education reform.

They would prefer we grade schools like we graded kids on my second-grade soccer team: Everybody gets praised for effort. Everybody gets a trophy! All the parents are happy.