Tag Archives: thoughtful

Our own appointed U.S. Senator and former Denver Public Schools superintendent Michael Bennet conducted a recent Q & A on federal education reform with Linda Kulman for Politics Daily. Here’s his answer to one question about incentives not matching objectives in the education system: We have not updated our theory of human capital, which is a fancy word for saying how do we attract and retain people to public education, since the labor market was one where women had two professional choices: being a nurse or being a teacher. We say to people, “We’d like you to come be a teacher, we imagine that you’re going to teach “Julius Caesar” every year for the next 30 years, we’re going to pay you a really terrible wage compared to what you could make doing almost anything else. … The way most school districts and states pay teachers in this country (is) if you leave any time in the first 20 years, you leave with what you’ve contributed to your retirement system … but if you stay for 30 years, you (get) a pension that’s worth three times what your Social Security is worth. No matter what else you want to do, […]

The times are changing in Washington, D.C. And that means federal education policy is on the table. What about No Child Left Behind? Should it be eliminated, or just modified? What is worth keeping, and what’s not? Starting today and going until Thursday, over at the NewTalk website, a group of education experts discuss the question: “Should we scrap No Child Left Behind?” The discussion is moderated by our good friend and prolific scholar Jay Greene. NewTalk is a project of the national legal reform group Common Good. Panelists include Joe Williams of Democrats for Education Reform, Neal McCluskey from Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom, the Hoover Institution’s Eric Hanushek, and Elaine Gantz Berman from the Colorado State Board of Education. Take some time in the next couple days to head over and check out the discussion, which is sure to be thoughtful and lively.