Author
Williamson Evers
Articles
Standards and Testing in the Obama Administration
An excerpt from What Lies Ahead for America’s Children and Their Schools
The Least Common Denominator
The effort to push underprepared students into academic courses has driven the rigor out of many textbooks and classrooms
Blog Posts/Multimedia
How Woodrow Wilson Denied African-Americans an Academic Education
Princeton University protesters against Woodrow Wilson captured headlines in mid-November. But what hasn’t received attention is the role of the Wilson administration in national K-12 education policy.
Blame Woodrow Wilson for Americans’ Lack of Historical Literacy
One hundred years ago, the Wilson administration put the clout of the federal government behind a new curricular development – social studies.
ESEA Reauthorization: Some Fixes to the Alexander Draft
Many bloggers have already pronounced their likes and dislikes of Senator Alexander’s ESEA reauthorization draft, and we would like to add to that discussion.
Exit, Voice, Loyalty—and the Common Core
Increasingly, parents and taxpayers view the public schools as an unresponsive bureaucracy carrying out edicts from distant capitals.
How the Common Core Suppresses Competitive Federalism
Nationalizing standards and tests would eliminate them as differentiated school-reform instruments that could be used by states in competition over educational attainment.
Evers Testimony on Common Core in Ohio
This testimony was presented in Ohio by Williamson Evers, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, on November 20, 2013.
Nationalizing Education Through National Defense?
We are living in Obama era of federal over-reach, and we don’t know how influential these current efforts at federal direction of K-12 curriculum will be. But the lesson of history is that what looks like a federal educational Juggernaut today can crumble tomorrow.
Evaluate Teachers on How Much Students Have Learned
On Tuesday, Nov. 1, a group of parents and taxpayers sued the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to make the district follow the law, by evaluating teachers based on how much their students have learned.
Obama Should Heed Tocqueville on Schools
It is worth the time to remind ourselves what some of Tocqueville’s insights were. Once we do, we can consider the Obama administration’s current nationalization of K-12 public-school curriculum, with Tocqueville’s insights in mind.
Undermining California’s (and America’s) Competiveness: Gov. Jerry Brown Approves National Science Standards – Fuzzy, Anti-Truth, & Mathless
It is hard to think of something that could be more important than teaching the subject-matter of science well. California and American K-12 students need to learn science content that is the most rigorous in the world, and teachers need to teach K-12 science in the most effective way possible.
Are NCLB Waivers Legal?
All sides agree that the machinery of NCLB has gotten old, and problems have arisen. But in the name of addressing these problems, Obama administration officials have arrogated to themselves the authority to rewrite the law. It is wrong for them to use waivers as a means to force states to adopt substantive policies that aren’t in the text of NCLB.
