UPDATE: Bret Schundler, fired from his post of education commissioner by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, has admitted that the fatal error in his state's Race to the Top application was his and his alone.  Continue Reading...

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is fuming at the federal government's unwillingness to let his administration address a clerical error in their 1,000 page application that likely cost his state $400 million in Race to the Top funding. A simple clerical mistake on the application switched 2008-09 budget numbers for 2010-11. Two weeks prior to the final decision, New Jersey officials met with federal officials and corrected the data in person, but apparently the verbal correction was not accepted. Gov. Christie is taking full responsibility and refuses to even release the name of the mid-level staffer who made the error.  Continue Reading...

I don't envy adults who walk around with an EpiPen in case they go into anaphylactic shock due to a debilitating allergy, which are all too common. I certainly don't envy the parents of children with dangerous allergies, parents who live each day with the anxiety that their child might just be out of reach of an EpiPen or someone capable of administering the shot, when they need it the most. One of those parents is Mark Hemingway, commentary staff writer for The Washington Examiner.  Continue Reading...

This week President Obama signed a $26 billion jobs bill designed to supplement struggling state education budgets, touting that the extra funding will save the jobs of teachers that would otherwise be laid off. Sarah Lee, of The Daily Caller, and others have criticized the bill as being a bailout to the teachers unions. In her argument, Lee notes that not all teacher associations are proponents of the union model, specifically noting (emphasis added):  Continue Reading...

Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced today the eighteen states plus D.C. who have a chance to compete for the final round of the Race to the Top funding program. $3.4 billion is still up for grabs after Delaware and Tennessee received $600 million in round one.  Continue Reading...

At their annual convention held earlier this month, the National Education Association heard a series of new business items (NBIs) that display their distaste for the charter movement: NBI 91, which failed to pass after debate, sought to start a counter-campaign to a number of documentaries about education reform and charters that will be playing in theaters across the country this year  Continue Reading...

Earlier this week the Massachusetts legislature approved an amendment to save retired USMC Maj. Stephen Godin's job. The measure, which had been defeated by Democrats the week before, exempts public school JROTC teachers, like Maj. Godin, from having to pay union dues.  Continue Reading...

After logging 2,000 hours flying F-4 Phantoms and serving in five overseas deployments, retired USMC Maj. Stephen Godin decided to take on an equally demanding challenge–teaching public high school. For the past fourteen years, Maj. Godin has been teaching in the distinguished JROTC program at North High School in Worcester, Massachusetts. The principal of North High praises Maj. Godin as an "excellent" instructor. Maj. Godin also coaches the regional champion drill team and he's never missed a day of work.  Continue Reading...

Politico reports that Republican and some Democratic politicians have turned on public workers and their labor unions—particularly teachers unions, including the NEA and the AFT. According to Politico, "public employee unions [are] emerging as an intransigent public enemy number one in cities and state capitals across the country."  Continue Reading...

Having never served as a judge, Elena Kagan, current U.S. Solicitor General and President Obama's pick to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court, has a "sparse" record on education policy, compared to nominees who have a record of judicial decisions and opinions. However, an analysis by Education Week has shed a little light on Kagan's record.  Continue Reading...

With 58% of school district voters defeating their local budget, some are declaring at least a partial victory for Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.), including the governor himself who called the election a "watershed moment." Victory or not, New Jersey voters usually approve 70% of school district budgets and this year marks the most budgets defeated since 1976.  Continue Reading...

Actually, it is closer to high noon in New Jersey, where newly-elected governor Chris Christie is in a showdown with the teachers union. In order to balance the budget, Gov. Christie has asked for teachers to accept a one-year pay freeze and contribute 1.5% of their salary towards health care costs  Continue Reading...

According to an editorial in The Star-Ledger, the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) has ensured that New Jersey will receive none of the $4 billion dollars available to states in the Race to the Top program. The NJEA "bristled" at charter school expansion and remains fundamentally opposed to merit pay, two reforms President Obama has emphasized in the program.  Continue Reading...

West Virginia State Sen. Erik Wells, a Democrat representing Kanawha, killed his own charter schools bill, criticizing the unions who opposed the legislation. "Who's standing up for students of this state?" Wells asked during his speech on the senate floor, "It's not AFT, it's not WVEA." Sen. Wells accused the unions of attacking his family because he sends his daughter to private school. Although Sen. Wells was elected in 2006 with union support, one teacher union has endorsed Wells' primary opponent.  Continue Reading...

According to the Education Intelligence Agency, the National Education Association has lost nearly 37,000 members from the previous year's total, the first time in 27 years that the nation's largest teachers union has experienced a net loss. EIA elaborates that only 15,000 of the lost members were "active certified" members.

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The Education Intelligence Agency, a popular education research blog run by Mike Antonucci, has analyzed the NEA's 2008-09 financial disclosure report and discovered that the largest teachers union in the country has given over $26 million of teacher dues, some collected by force, to advocacy groups.  Continue Reading...

Florida Education Association president Andy Ford published an open letter to Florida Education Commissioner Eric Smith voicing his opposition to the way the Education Department's Race to the Top program is being operated. "The Race to the Top dollars will not have the desired impact," Ford claims, and, according to Education Week, the FEA and other state unions are threatening withholding their endorsement of state applications, "jeopardize the states' chances of winning the coveted federal dollars." Why would the unions do this?  Continue Reading...

The December 2009 edition of Education Matters (now available for non-members to read and download) includes an article highlighting how a local teachers union in Washington state disaffiliated from the state and national teachers unions. In "Declaring Independence," read about how the local teachers freed themselves from the WEA and the NEA—and saved money.   Continue Reading...

The Los Angeles teachers union has been advised by their lawyers to sue the Los Angeles Unified School District to prevent schools from being turned over to charter school operators. United Teachers Los Angeles, a 48,000-member joint affiliate of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, received the recommendation in a memo last month, which was subsequently leaked to the Los Angeles Times.   Continue Reading...

The Hawaii Department of Education and the Hawaii teachers union and government employees union have reached a deal that keeps the state from laying off teachers for two years during an unprecedented budget crisis. The cost? Hawaii, which already ranks 47th in 8th grade math and reading, is cutting their school year by 17 days. Teachers are taking a corresponding 8% pay cut, but there are no other cuts in benefits, vacation, holidays, or teacher planning days. Did anyone ask the students and parents if this is the right solution?  Continue Reading...