NEAL: ISTA ‘Crying Wolf’ Over Education Reform
by ANDREA NEAL In Chicago, teachers are poised to go on strike over a pay metric they think is unfair, longer school days they’d rather not work, and class sizes they consider unreasonable. The Florida Education Association is challenging a proposal that ties teacher evaluations to student test scores, one of several factors used to Read the full article…
The GOP Agenda Meets the Pareto Principle
The Pareto Principle — after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, observing that 20 percent of the pea pods in his garden contained 80 percent of the peas. As Hoosiers prepare to elect a new governor and perhaps make changes in the Senate and House leadership we would be wise to measure the effect of envy on Read the full article…
BOHANON: Proud of ‘Liberal’ Indiana
by CECIL BOHANON, Ph.D. In May 1988, Professor James McGill Buchanan, the 1986 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, told the graduating class at Ball State University that he “had never been attracted to the romantic nonsense that government or politicians know what is best . . .” He encouraged the students to “nurture Read the full article…
Book Review
Dave Bego. The Devil at Our Doorstep. CreateSpace, North Charleston, S.C., 2012. $14.95 The difficult thing about fighting for free markets is that our successes are invisible or are projected beyond the political horizon — and, maddeningly, so are the failed promises of our statist opponents. That, however, is lessened with publication of Dave Bego’s Read the full article…
KEATING: Restoring Professionalism to Education
by MARYANN O. KEATING, Ph.D. Steve Jobs, the computer pioneer, warned Barack Obama that there can be no effective educational reform unless teachers are treated as professionals, not like workers in an assembly line (“Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson). James Buchanan, the Nobel Laureate in Economics, noted that education is a unique activity: Those who Read the full article…
The Rabbit Is Eating the Eco-Devo Hat
by CRAIG LADWIG Many years ago a big-name manufacturer in my town shocked a heavily unionized labor force by announcing it was pulling up stakes for more productive pastures. Our mayor, a master politician, announced what was then an innovative policy — subsidies and tax abatements. In private, the mayor conceded to the editors of Read the full article…
