Rishawn Biddle
These days, Michael Bloomberg probably wishes he skipped his successful push to serve a third term as New York City mayor. His standing as one of the most-successful players in the nation’s school reform movement took a hit earlier this…
Last week’s Wisconsin supreme court election still remains too close to call. Depending on the results of the recount — and whether current justice David Prosser maintains his slim lead over assistant attorney general JoAnne Kloppenburg — Gov. Scott Walker’s…
Even among the nation’s woeful traditional big-city school districts, Detroit Public Schools is a particular abomination. Between falling into state receivership for the second time in the past 12 years, facing $327 million in budget deficits for the next four…
These days, Edmund Gerald (Jerry) Brown Jr. probably wishes he was anything other than California’s once and future governor. The state’s intractable fiscal and educational woes, along with its dysfunctional political culture, all but assure that his third term in…
When former Luzerne County (Pa.) Court of Common Pleas judge Mark Ciavarella was convicted last month on racketeering and bribery charges connected to the convictions of more than 2,500 juvenile offenders, it marked the latest chapter in one of the…
Even with such big names as Hillary Clinton in President Barack Obama’s cabinet, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has become the administration’s biggest attraction. From appearing with singer John Legend to bring more black college students into teaching, to…
One would think that Alabama, a state in which teachers unions don’t have the power to force school districts into collective bargaining, would be a bastion of school reform. But within the past year or so, the National Education Association’s…
When Atlanta hosted the centennial Olympic Games in 1996, then-Mayor Bill Campbell predicted that it would just be another step in the city’s progress as one of America’s leading boom towns. “It will put us in orbit. Atlanta will never…
If there is a reason why more radical forms of school choice are critical to the reform of America’s education crisis, it can be seen in the case of Kelley Williams-Bolar, a student teacher in Akron, Ohio, convicted of using…
America’s 15-year-olds ranked 25th in among nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on the 2009 PISA test of international student achievement. That ranking, however, is being kind. The score for the average American high school freshmen was…
