Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'education'

August 27, 2010

Anthony Bradley: Teachers unions, civil rights groups protect failed schools

The Detroit News picked up Anthony Bradley’s Acton Commentary this week, and republished it as “Teachers unions, civil rights groups protect failed schools.” Bradley: Civil-rights groups including the NAACP, the National Urban League, Rainbow PUSH Coalition, recently released a joint statement objecting to the Obama administration’s education reform proposal, which includes the closing of failing schools, increasing use of charter schools, and other common sense moves toward choice and accountability in education. Continue Reading...
August 05, 2010

Re: Broken Windows – University Funding Edition

As Kishore Jayabalan noted yesterday, the fallacy of “broken windows” is, unfortunately, ubiquitous in discussions of public finance and macroeconomics. Though we are told that government spending and public works have a stimulating effect on economic activity, rarely are the costs of such projects discussed. Continue Reading...
June 15, 2010

Public Schools: Adult Employment Programs

I’ve long argued that school choice is the quintessential bipartisan cause, with boundless potential to transform American primary and secondary education. Yet, for various reasons (all of them bad), it has failed to live up to that potential—its significant successes in various places notwithstanding. Continue Reading...
August 11, 2009

A Checkered Future?

Chester E. Finn Jr. served with William J. Bennett [The Book of Virtues et al] in The Department of Education under President Reagan from 1985 to 1988 — that point in Reagan’s presidency when the talk of shutting down the Department had been abandoned. Continue Reading...
July 31, 2009

Greeks Bearing Gifts

In a Wall Street Journal article titled “The Great Philanthropy Takeover” Arkansas based writer David Sanders reports on a recent conference of the nationwide Council of Foundations in his home state.  Continue Reading...
July 02, 2009

U.S. Doctoral Degree Prestige in Science, Engineering, Economics

A recent NBER working paper, “Internationalization of U.S. Doctorate Education,” takes a look at trends in doctoral degrees awarded by American institutions in the physical sciences, engineering, and economics. From the abstract, “The representation of a large number of students born outside the United States among the ranks of doctorate recipients from U.S. Continue Reading...
March 09, 2009

Economic Literacy on Campus: Abysmal

Maurice Black and Erin O’Connor, research fellows at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, write in “Illiterates,” a column in Newsday, that “younger Americans are deplorably uninformed about economic and financial matters.” Continue Reading...