Select Page
How To Fix Our Schools

How To Fix Our Schools

I'm not one to spend time commenting on something as innocuous as a movie, but I just finished watching something that was both compelling and surprising. Davis Guggenheim's documentary "Waiting For Superman" had my attention for the entire 111 minutes, and I learned some important things about the successes of some alternative charter schools, the bureaucratic nightmares that have impeded some schools from succeeding, and most importantly the devastating stranglehold that the teacher's unions exert in ensuring that teachers are as demotivated as possible.  The story of the attempts by the District of Columbia school district to partner with the teacher's union to create a pathway to success is scandalous, and clearly ensures that failing teachers never have to be held accountable. I get why unions came to exist, and I get the fact that some unions may actually still create value in some situations. However, I think we are far past seeing any value in government and education unions.  Watching the president of the American Federation of Teachers extoll [...]
Spreading The ???

Spreading The ???

As I've been listening to and contemplating the whole discussion around "spreading the wealth", it's occurred to me that when the wealth is being spread, there's more than just wealth that gets spread. That's right, the poverty gets spread too. Of course, calling it "spreading the poverty" might seem too severe, but here's the thing: people have poverty, wealth, or something in between. If you spread one, you spread it all. My preference now is to think of it as "spreading the mediocrity". As we discussed in the past, providing equal access to economic resources ("spreading the wealth", or "wealth redistribution") is going to lead to a society that is motivated to meet the status quo, to do just enough to get by, to even lower itself to ensure that there is just enough work to either[...]
    Log in