EducationNews.org

By Liam Julian
The name of the nation’s most visible, self-defined Latino civil-rights organization, the National Council of La Raza, translates as the National Council of The Race. The official website denies it, of course, but we have dictionaries. That controversial term — La Raza — is gaining currency: Some K-12 public schools now teach something called “Raza Studies.”

by Michael J. Petrilli
National Review Online: Obama's Impromptu Response On Education Leaves Much To Be Desired

By Liam Julian
Now that the Supreme Court has ruled against the Louisville and Seattle school districts, race-based student assignment policies are mostly illegal.

We’ve come a long way!
By Peter Wood
Six years ago I published my first article on National Review Online about “diversity” in higher education. The article led to a book contract and, in 2003, a book, Diversity: The Invention of a Concept. It also led to a still-expanding circle of friends and acquaintances, including Ward Connerly and Jennifer Gratz. And it led, perhaps only a little indirectly, to my recent appointment as executive director of the National Association of Scholars. Thanks NRO!

Profs show hostility toward evangelicals.
Fifty-three percent of “non-evangelical university faculty say they hold cool or unfavorable views of Evangelical Christians,” according to a two-year study released today by the Institute for Jewish & Community Research. According to the study, one-third of all faculty surveyed also admitted to holding unfavorable views of Mormons.

My advice for middle schoolers.
By John J. Miller
My five-year-old son has no idea what I do for a living. As near as he can tell, I spend the bulk of my time in a basement office, staring at a computer screen, and occasionally talking on the phone or typing. He probably wonders why I don’t do something more interesting, such as play computer games, because that’s what he’d do.

By Michael J. Petrilli
If you enjoy political theater of the absurd, tune in to a House Education and Labor committee hearing Friday on "Mismanagement and Conflicts of Interest in the Reading First Program." There you will see a former Bush-administration official defending a highly prescriptive big-government program against one of the most liberal, big-government Democrats on Capitol Hill, who will, you can count on it, be demanding flexibility and freedom from big-government control.
Reading First has emerged as the most popular part of the No Child Left Behind law

Philadephia's troubled education system could benefit from tax credits.
Spiraling violence in the Philadelphia school district may be making most of the headlines, but the district faces another, less well-known crisis: a runaway budget that threatens to sink an already floundering school system.

By Frederick M. Hess & Francesca Lowe
Think tanks just aren't keeping pace with the professional education research community. As policymakers wrestle with No Child Left Behind’s reauthorization and educators struggle to comply with its spirit, both communities are increasingly serious about seeking out rigorous and useful research. But education professors Kevin Welner and Alex Molnar fretted in a recent Education Week back-pager that policymakers are turning to “slickly produced” research produced by “ideologically driven” think tanks rather than studies being conducted and sanctioned by the nation’s professional education research community.

By Peter Wood
Last Thursday, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings held a "summit" in Washington of 250 leaders from business and academe. Dubbed "A Test of Leadership," the summit was Spellings's latest effort to overcome skepticism over her aggressive plan to change the ground rules of American higher education. That plan has five parts, and while all five deserve gimlet-eyed scrutiny, one of them — "outcomes assessment" — is exceptionally mischievous.