School Reform News Podcast

The executive president of one of the nation's largest teachers unions is under fire for the revelation that her eldest son attends a private school. Teachers unions universally oppose school choice programs that include private schools, and in doing so they deny education opportunities to children whose parents cannot afford to pay for them to leave the deteriorating public schools. This is an especially troubling problem in nearly all the nation's big cities, where the public schools are plagued by poor student achievement, disorderly behavior in classrooms and other facilities, disastrous teaching methods based on ridiculous fads, and politicized curricula. Denisha Allen, a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children and founder of Black Minds Matter, joins School Reform News to discuss this problem.

The other day, Heartland Institute Editorial Director Chris Talgo, was on the Rod Arquette Show in Salt Lake City, Utah to talk about the pathetic results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The nation's report card found that only 13 percent of 8th graders are considered proficient in US History.  Chris is a former U.S. History teacher in the public schools of the Chicago Suburbs and a small town in South Carolina. That was almost a decade ago, and even back then Chris was shocked at how little his students knew about American history. And now the results are even worse. Why is it getting worse? Chris explains in this excerpt from the Rod Arquette show. Have a listen.