"Ben Chavis, the most politically incorrect person on the planet, is also, not coincidentally, one of the people most correct about inner-city education. Read this book by a man who gets results as a practitioner of the 'no excuses' approach to schooling."
- George F. Will, The Washington Post columnist
"…[T]here is much to be learned from this account. It is possible to restore public education to its mission of educating the nation's citizens. There is a message of hope and possibility in 'Crazy Like a Fox' that we should embrace."
- Mitchell Kapor, The San Francisco Chronicle
"Chavis [is] undeniably one of the country's finest educators…Thrust this book into the hands of all the parents you know and implore them to read it…Chavis is passionate, articulate, and entertaining. He's also right."
- Mark Hemingway, National Review
"American Indian [is] a rarity in American education, defying the axiom that poor black and Latino children will lag behind others in school."
- Mitchell Landsberg, Los Angeles Times
"To get the kind of results Chavis does in Oakland is a work of stripped-down genius. Ben's book reads like Ben talks: forthright, funny, irreverent, and wise. For anyone who cares about American education, for anyone who cares about America, Crazy Like a Fox is an essential read."
- Jack Cashill, author What's the Matter with California?
Yesterday in Oakland during the one-day teacher strike sponsored by the teachers’ union (Oakland Education Association), a union member allegedly vandalized property at American Indian Public Charter School (the school where I used to teach for Dr. Ben Chavis and which formed the basis for Crazy Like a Fox).
AIPCS is a non-unionized charter school that [...]
Finally, some progress has been made on this topic, which is one of the most egregious examples of what unions can do to a school system. This type of union abuse makes me so disgusted with our public school system! What a wasteful and shameful embarrassment for America.
From The New York Times:
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg [...]
Below are some excerpts from a great article in Newsweek called “Why We Must Fire Bad Teachers.” (By Evan Thomas and Pat Wingert; http://www.newsweek.com/id/234590/page/1):
…Yet in recent years researchers have discovered something that may seem obvious, but for many reasons was overlooked or denied. What really makes a difference, what matters more than the class size [...]
In a small, poor city in Rhode Island sits a low-performing high school with a graduation rate of 48% and a math proficiency rate of 7%.
Within the same school sit teachers—many making over $72,000 a year—who do not want to take on reform responsibilities without significant pay increases. They have the union’s backing.
Enter School Superintendent [...]
Warning: You may want to groan, throw up, or shout at your computer in disgust when you read this article about incompetent teachers and the back-room deals and special interests that keep them in the classroom in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).
L.A. Weekly took the bull by the horns with the fiery expose, “LAUSD’s [...]
Wow, here’s a headline to get your attention: “Detroit parents want DPS teachers, officials jailed over low test scores”. The Detroit News ran this story on December 12, 2009, after outraged parents discovered their children had the worst math scores in the nation!
The scores were from the National Assessment of Educational Progress test. The [...]
About a month ago I wrote about potentially promising legislation making its way through the California legislature. Bill SBX5 1 was intended to make California competitive for the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top funds. After the bipartisan bill passed in the California Senate, it died in the Assembly Education Committee–largely in part, it seems, [...]
The mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, recently announced his intention to use student test scores as a determinant in deciding whether to grant teachers tenure. Of course the teachers’ union is vehemently opposed to the proposal.
Bloomberg is looking to the New York legislature to require all the state’s districts to implement “data-driven systems” [...]
It appears there is a glimmer of hope for the school reform movement in California.
The California Senate approved Senate Bill X5 1 last week, which repeals the state’s cap on charter schools and provides students at low-performing schools with the choice to attend better schools. It also “encourages school districts to reward teachers who consistently [...]
Last week Nicolas D. Kristof wrote a widely popular column–so popular in fact that the New York Times eventually cut off comments–on both the importance of high-quality teachers in the classroom and the ways in which teachers’ unions stymie effective education reform. For a look at “rubber rooms” and union strangleholds and a call to [...]