Walt Gardner's Reality Check
Walt Gardner taught for 28 years in the Los Angeles Unified School District and was a lecturer in the UCLA Graduate School of Education. This blog is no longer being updated.
Education
Opinion
Are Teachers Actually Overpaid?
No, the headline is not a typo. It's the conclusion of a new study "Assessing the Compensation of Public-School Teachers" by Jason Richwine, senior policy analyst in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, and Andrew Biggs, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. They attempt to show that public school teachers receive compensation far more generous than is widely believed. They cite summers off, job security, and fringe benefits (health insurance etc.) that make "total compensation 52 percent greater than fair market levels, equivalent to more than $120 billion overcharged to taxpayers each year."
Education
Opinion
Is a College Degree Still a Good Investment?
It's only natural for parents to want their children to have a better life than they have. That's one of the reasons they've been willing for so long to subsidize the cost of a college education. But as wages for workers with a four-year degree on average fell by 8.6 percent (adjusted for inflation) from 2000 to 2010, and student loan debt rose to nearly $1 trillion today, parents are understandably having second thoughts.
Education
Opinion
Graduation Rate Is No Guarantee of Learning
Whenever reformers want to score points about their bleak view of the state of K-12 education, they invariably cite data showing that only 76 percent of students in public schools graduate within four years of entering the 9th grade.
Education
Opinion
Teachers Speak Out at Their Own Peril
The latest blow to freedom of speech for teachers occurred at Occupy Los Angeles when a substitute teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District made an anti-Semitic remark and was subsequently fired by the district's superintendent. According to the Los Angeles Times, Patricia McAllister said in a taped interview with Reason TV that "The Zionist Jews who are running these big banks and the Federal Reserve ... need to be run out of this country" ("Free speech -- within limits," editorial, Oct. 20).
Education
Opinion
New View on IQ
The long smoldering debate over the role that environment plays in intelligence was reignited by researchers at University College London who found that IQ is more malleable than previously believed. Although genes still play a powerful role, biology is not destiny. Experience has the potential to alter the brain by affecting neural synapses ("As Brain Changes, So Can IQ," The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 20).
Education
Opinion
Nothing New about Teaching from Bill Gates
One of the perks of being a billionaire is that anything you submit to a newspaper is definitely going to be published. No one has been more successful in this respect than Bill Gates opining about education. His latest essay, which appeared in The Wall Street Journal, was nothing more than a rehash of what others have proposed as a way of improving educational quality ("Grading the Teachers," Oct. 22). Yet Gates believes that he has broken new ground.
Education
Opinion
The H-1B Visa Teacher Scandal
The controversy over H-1B visas to date has largely centered on their issuance to engineers and scientists who are willing to work in the private sector at lower wages than their American counterparts. Despite the 50 percent decline in the number of petitions this year below last year and 80 percent decrease below 2009, the debate has merely subsided, rather than disappear.
Education
Opinion
Founding Parents at Charter Schools
The justification for charter schools is that they provide parents with a wide range of choices at public expense. But what is increasingly happening in Los Angeles, which has more charter schools than any other city in the nation, serves as a warning that all is not well with the movement.
Education
Opinion
Taking Standardized Tests to an Extreme
Any hope that the controversy over the misuse of standardized test scores had finally run its course evaporated when news about the practice used by a high school in Orange County, California made the headlines.
Education
Opinion
The Role of Technology in Learning
Just as a drowning person reaches out in desperation to anything that offers the possibility of rescue, so too are many financially strapped school districts spending heavily on software and hardware that offer the possibility of improving learning. According to a front-page story in The New York Times, sales of computer software to schools in 2010 amounted to $1.89 billion and spending on hardware was five times that amount ("In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores," Sept. 4).
Education
Opinion
Overhauling Bilingual Education
The new school year is guaranteed to intensify the already contentious debate about ways to narrow the achievement gap between the nation's second largest ethnic group and its white counterparts. I'm referring to the performance of Hispanics, whose numbers have grown dramatically over the past four decades until they now constitute 21 percent of the public school student population.
Education
Opinion
The Changing Demographics of the Teaching Profession
There was a time when most students in K-12 could expect to be taught by veteran teachers. But this is no longer the case, as the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future points out ("Classroom 'crisis': Many teachers have little or no experience," msnbc.com, Sept. 26). In the 1987-88 school year, for example, 14 years was the most common level of experience. But by 2007-08, it was one or two years.
Education
Opinion
Mind and Body Deserve Equal Attention in Schools
You'd think that the rise in childhood obesity, along with childhood diabetes and hypertension, would provide reformers with an incentive to make physical education a high priority in K-12. But that has not been the case. Most states in this country have either watered down the requirement for physical education or eliminated it entirely because of budget cuts.
Education
Opinion
It's Hypocritical to Demand Merit Pay for Teachers
Misunderstanding contentious issues in education is common among those who have never taught, as an op-ed about merit pay for teachers written by FranTarkenton, NFL Hall of Fame quarterback with the Minnesota Vikings and the New York Giants, illustrates ("What if the NFL Played by Teachers' Rules?" Oct. 3).