Dave Shepherd

Today’s raids by state and federal law enforcement happened because our state agencies caught irregular behavior and reported it. That’s how the system is supposed to work, and our agencies will keep at it as long as there are fraudsters around to put behind bars.

Many people genuinely believe teachers have an “easy job” with short hours, summers off, and great benefits. And yet, over the past 7 years, we’ve seen record numbers of teachers leave the profession while fewer people are choosing to enter it. Why leave such an ‘easy job’? 🙄

Schools spend hours trying to “reach” the kid who openly doesn’t care, while the kid who tries every day quietly gets ignored. We’re exhausting ourselves chasing resistance instead of investing in effort.

Student apathy is a major challenge in schools. Agree?

Somewhere along the way, student accountability disappeared.

If we’re serious about tackling teen crime in Washington, D.C., we need to lower the age of accountability. These offenders don’t need coddling, they need consequences.

How in the world did it ever become normal to provide teachers with such a disgracefully short time to eat lunch?!

It’s not the teachers!

The American education system is fixated on finding the latest method or system to get students reading and writing. Unfortunately, no hack exists. Reading is sometimes dull. Writing is often hard. You can’t entertain yourself to an education.

Grade inflation is the natural result of a number of external pressures on teachers, resulting in perverse incentives. It’s driven by adult discomfort caused by pressure from parents and administrators, and the fact that honest grading would reveal how many students are actually failing to learn. To reverse it would create immense short term pain, but to let it persist is to delay that pain until later, in adulthood, when it’s harder to recover.