Education Reform

by Allison Kasic
July 25, 2008, 9:19am

Over at NRO, Dan Lips interviews Former Governor Jeb Bush about education reform.  Particularly interesting is the progress that Bush's state of Florida has made through bold education reforms:

NRO: In the area of education reform, no state has implemented bolder reforms than Florida did under your leadership. A decade later, are you seeing results in Florida's classrooms?

Governor Bush: Since the introduction of accountability, high standards, and school choice nearly a decade ago, Florida has seen rising student achievement. Recent test scores show our students continue to make gains in reading and math and now outpace the national average of their peers across the country - in both subjects at every grade level. Today, approximately three quarters of Florida's students are reading and performing math on grade level, compared to barely half of our students in 2001. This year, the Goldwater Institute, a public-policy think tank in Arizona, took a closer look at education reform in Florida and found that our state's low-income Hispanic students are actually outperforming the general student population in several states, including the Grand Canyon State.

Florida has made incredible gains during the last decade, but there is so much work left to do. We still have students left behind in failing schools. We are narrowing the achievement gap, but not quickly enough. Too many students graduating from Florida high schools are not prepared for the rigors of college or the workforce.   NRO: What do you think made the difference? Which of the policies that you championed - from setting standards and measuring performance to ending social promotion and expanding school-choice options for families - do you think made the most difference?

Governor Bush: Raising standards, measuring progress, grading school performance, providing educational options and targeting resources to reward success and reverse failure are all tools that are transforming schools and raising student achievement.

However, success is never final. I hope we never stop trying to implement more innovative and audacious reforms.

More here.

The Lawnmower Men

by Allison Kasic
July 25, 2008, 9:17am

Beware, the EPA are coming to get you.

The First Lady on Education

by Allison Kasic
July 24, 2008, 5:31pm

Over at USA Today, Laura Bush talks education and specifically defends the testing requirements of No Child Left Behind.  

Check it out here.

"If you show fear, they will eat you"

by Halima Karzai
July 24, 2008, 1:27pm

"Why women now lead the dissident fight in Cuba" is a fascinating article in the Christian Science Monitor highlighting the efforts made by a group of courageous women peacefully fighting for change for all Cubans in spite of the growing defiance they are facing from Raul Castro's government.

"If you show fear, they will eat you," says Ms. Rivero, a regional head of the Latin American Federation of Rural Women (FLAMUR), a Cuban group dedicated to pushing for political rights. "They won't swallow me whole."

It was campaigning for a single currency that got Rivero punched in the mouth last August, she says. She was handing out T-shirts with the slogan: "Con la misma moneda," meaning "with the same money." This prompted three men, who she says were government-paid thugs, to attack her on a city bus and attempt to throw her out into traffic. She lost two back teeth, she says, opening wide to show the gaps.

"We're always under surveillance," says Ms. Suarez calmly, explaining that she works with other women to bring political prisoners food, medicine, books, and moral support. But, at times, she becomes the prisoner. "Sometimes they'll lock me up for a day or so."

Her daughter, Yuricel, who was inspired by US first lady Laura Bush (a former school teacher and librarian) to become a librarian, is out of work and blacklisted. She says she was fired for handing out books provided by the US government.

Rivero's still so angry with the government that she rejects the food vouchers that all Cubans get. Instead, she's made it a point to be self-sufficient by growing enough food to feed herself - and to donate to others.

Read full article.

Since When is "Lady" a Bad Word?

by Allison Kasic
July 24, 2008, 10:14am

Over at USA Today, Christine Brennan laments the use of the word "ladies" in regards to women's sports (i.e. the "ladies singles" competition in tennis or figure skating).  Brennan thinks that the term is dated in a post-Title IX world where women are just as tough as the guys.  As evidence that female athletes are so tough, Brennan points to the recent WNBA brawl between Detroit and L.A., as if that is some sign of progress for women.  

One of the comments on the article sums up my feelings exactly: "Wow, what a world we live in, when it's an insult to be called a lady!"  I can't fathom that being an insult, mostly because I 1) view it as a sign of respect and 2) I don't think the term is mutually exclusive from being a tough competitor.  When you look at the sports where the term is most commonly used -- figure skating, tennis, and golf -- it seems perfectly appropriate.  There is an element of grace to those sports that "women's" doesn't quite capture.   

Agree?  Disagree?  Have at it in the comments.

Sex, Bias, and Data

by Allison Kasic
July 24, 2008, 9:47am

Over at his NYT blog, John Tierney continues to examine the push to apply Title IX to the sciences.  He looks at claims of bias in the field of chemistry.  The data he finds doesn't back up the claims.  Check it out here.  

Stay tuned for a new IWF policy paper on this issues, which will be released soon.

Feminist Super-Women Unite!

by Allison Kasic
July 23, 2008, 5:37pm

Over at Townhall.com, Karin Agness reports on the 2008 NOW conference: 

Superwoman made a curious appearance this weekend, gracing the program cover of the National Organization for Women (NOW) National Conference, which was themed, "No Capes, No Masks, No Boundaries: Feminist Super-Women Unite!"

"The concept of feminist superheroes is not much of a stretch," Kim Gandy, President of NOW, said.  "Both feminists and superheroes are dedicated to fighting injustice, while facing off against corrupt, malicious villains out to dominate the world (Bush and Cheney, anyone?).  What makes feminists special is that they do this without superhuman powers-just a lot of pride, passion and patience."

Besides revealing an inflated view of their own organization, the superhero analogy demonstrates the destructive attitude dominating feminism today.  It is the attitude that everyone is against women, out to get them.  To feminists, women must take on the entire world.  They must save everyone, even sometimes from themselves.  Like Superwoman, these feminists are constantly fearful that they will find an enemy, like sexism, around every corner.  The media: Sexist.  Fewer women in math and sciences: Sexism.  Fewer female elected officials: Sexism.

Get all the details here. 

I wrote about the 2006 NOW conference here.

Connecting the Dots on Energy Policy

by Allison Kasic
July 23, 2008, 5:27pm

Over at Townhall.com, IWF's Carrie Lukas observes:

Undoubtedly, a variety of factors contribute to rising energy costs, but voters increasingly seem to understand that the central problem is one of supply and demand. In testimony before Congress this week, the Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernake, explained it like this: "There are multiple causes, no doubt, for energy price increases. The most important cause is the global supply-and-demand balance. The fact that ... oil production has not kept up with the growth and demand for oil, particularly in emerging market countries which are growing quickly and industrializing."

That's as simple as it gets. Demand has gone up. Supply hasn't, so prices have gone up. The clear solution is to find ways to increase energy supply. Conservation, reducing our demand for energy, would also help, of course, but most Americans know the limits to their ability to reduce energy use. High costs have discouraged many from taking a summer road trip, but hasn't changed the need to get to and from work each day.

Unfortunately, many politicians are reluctant to admit this reality:

The Democratic Congress has been reluctant to acknowledge the need to allow an increase in energy supply. Their rhetoric and legislative initiatives seem designed more to confuse the voter about the root causes of the oil price spike than to actually solve the problem. For example, in an attempt to counter calls for more drilling, Democrats focused on how many acres are already available for exploration, suggesting that companies are letting vast supplies stay idle while prices surge. Yet surely the Democrats know that if oil was really readily available in these acres, the greedy corporations they complain so much about would be drawing supplies out now to take advantage of the record prices.

Democrats have also focused on the role of "speculators" in oil markets. But they misrepresent the role that speculators play. By buying commodities at low prices and selling when prices go up, speculators generally decrease price volatility. Moreover, if speculation was really the cause of high prices, there would be growing inventories of oil, and there's no evidence of such stockpiling. Legislative attempts to quash "speculation" will do nothing to change the root cause of high prices, which remains our limited energy supply.

More here.

The Duke Lacrosse Lawsuit

by Allison Kasic
July 21, 2008, 9:42am

Here's the latest update.

Empowering Teachers to Improve Schools

by Allison Kasic
July 21, 2008, 9:40am

An inspiring message courtesy of Tiki Barber.

Title IX and Science

by Allison Kasic
July 18, 2008, 1:28pm

John Tierney had an interesting piece in the New York Times this week looking at the push to "Title IX" science classrooms.  

As we've said time and time again here at IWF:  BEWARE.  The different rates of participation in the sciences are not necessarily a problem, and even if it is, government intervention is not the answer.  IWF's Carrie Lukas explains:

Innate differences in aptitudes, temperament, and interest likely play a role in leading fewer women than men to pursue and commit to STEM disciplines. Attempts to steer students toward one area of study to achieve a politically correct gender balance would ignore students' true preferences, potentially leaving them worse off. 

Greater government intervention to encourage institutions to reach an outcome closer to parity in enrollment in STEM fields could also have a discriminatory impact on men.  While policymakers and bureaucrats attempting to institute policies to encourage institutional change would undoubtedly claim not to be creating a "quota" or encouraging the creation of different expectations for male and female students, the experience with the use of Title IX in the athletic arena should serve as a warning to the public.  Title IX has encouraged schools to embrace a quota mentality in college athletics, leading many schools to eliminate men's teams in order to reduce the number of male athletes so that men's and women's participation rates are more equal.  If this approach is applied to academic subjects, it could adversely impact students and scholarship.

Even those who champion women's interests alone should be concerned about the potential for Title IX's application to academy.  After all, women now account for six in ten undergraduate students, and earn the overwhelming majority of degrees in biology, psychology, and much of the humanities.  If Title IX is applied to STEM, it would be reasonable to assume that Title IX also would have to be applied to other academic areas.  As a result, women may find themselves discouraged from pursuing disciplines that, for a host of reasons, they have traditionally found most attractive. 

To the extent that there are barriers to women pursuing STEM, including discrimination against women and stereotypes that deter women from pursuing these fields, individual institutions are best suited to counteract these problems.  Numerous nonprofit organizations reach out to young women to encourage them to pursue degrees in STEM fields.  Individual schools are attempting to reach out to prospective female students as well as find ways to make STEM departments more hospitable to female students.  These are the best ways to alleviate social pressures without undermining the independence of the academy.

More here.

New IWF Fact Sheets

by Allison Kasic
July 17, 2008, 5:05pm

Check out the campus resources page to get the 411 on:  

Energy prices  

Sexual harassment policies on campus  

How school choice benefits families  

The living wage

Drilling for Oil

by Carrie L. Lukas
July 17, 2008, 1:03pm

Over at National Review Online, Mark Hemingway has a really interesting story on his experience visiting an off-shore oil platform:

The platform is the size of a few football fields jammed together, and the top of the derrick was easily a few hundred feet off the water. Dozens of people lived on board, and everything - from the computer systems to the actual drilling rig - was state of the art. Brutus produced over 100,000 barrels of oil a day - down from over 300,000 at its peak capacity.

That sounds impressive. But here's what truly floored me: Shell decided Brutus's location in the gulf would be profitable for drilling in April 1999. The company then built the massive oil platform, transported it to the right location in the gulf, anchored the floating leviathan onto the seafloor 3,000 feet below, drilled 17,000 feet below that, and began producing oil in July 2001. It took only two years to get Brutus online.

Of course, as Hemingway writes, this doesn't mean that allowing additional exploration would mean that Americans would be enjoying $2 per gallon gasoline, but it does suggest that help could be on the way sooner than many drilling opponents are willing to admit. Of course, allowing more exploration might also encourage foreign producers to begin pumping more and discourage speculation. In other words, while allowing drilling isn't an immediate fix, it would generate positive effects very quickly.

Podcast Alert

by Allison Kasic
July 15, 2008, 9:56am

Carrie Lukas and I  discuss several issues pertaining to women in the workplace, including the wage gap and mandated paid leave here.

Who Is Uninsured?

by Carrie L. Lukas
July 14, 2008, 1:38pm

The Clare Booth Luce Institute has put out a great primer on health care written by long-time friend of IWF, Sally Pipes. Health care is a central issue in every campaign and can be confusing. This piece helps seperate out fact from myth, helps the reader better understand who the uninsured are (hint, they are often young and with above average incomes) and what's at stake in reform proposals. It's a must read for anyone who cares about the future of our health care system.

Iraqi Women Putting Aside Fear and Fighting Violence

by Halima Karzai
July 14, 2008, 12:15pm

Due to a rise in female suicide attacks, the Daughters of Iraq, a group of approxiamately 70 women are bravely standing together in an attempt to curb Iraq's growing wave of female suicide bombers.

The group of women security volunteers was formed in an effort to stop female suicide attacks in Diyala province, still torn by violence. The women will begin searching other women at checkpoints, schools and hospitals next week.

The group of 70 represented a total of 130 women who graduated after a five-day training course. They join the ranks of some 80,000 U.S.-allied men security volunteers countrywide, called the Sons of Iraq.

Unlike their male counterparts, however, the Daughters of Iraq will not carry weapons.

The program was conceived in response to a rise in female suicide attacks in the province, said U.S. army Capt. Charles Knoll, whose unit is responsible for security in several towns in the Diyala river valley, north of Baghdad.

More than nine suicide attacks have been carried out by women in Diyala this year, part of a wave of over 20 female suicide attacks countrywide.

We see female police in America and we want to be like them," said Alwan. "It is a dream we want to make true. We want to use all the power we have to help our country."

"The danger is normal for me," she said. "If I don't help my country, who will?"

Read the complete article here.  

Feminist Dust Up

by Allison Kasic
July 11, 2008, 11:51am

You might want to check out this dust up between feminists at the Huffington Post and Jezebel.  It's creating quite the battle royale in the leftie blogosphere.  The conversation is practically a competition for who can dole out the worst advice (with comments like "People are always saying it's not safe to go home with strange men, blah, blah blah, like Mr. Goodbar whatever.")  Quotes and video clips (warning: adult language) available here.  

An Inkwell reader who sent me the article summed things up nicely:  "It's an astonishing conflagration of some of the worst advice ever dished out to young women."

Country Club Feminism

by Allison Kasic
July 10, 2008, 10:20am

Heather MacDonald had an interesting piece in City Journal last week about the NYT's ongoing obsession with gender-and-country-club-amenties.  Here's the latest situation that's outraging the Times:

The Phoenix Country Club has male and female members and a common dining room. But like many clubs, it has separate men's and women's grill rooms-an innocuous arrangement to which members agree by joining the club. The Times points out darkly: "Women at the club are not permitted to have lunch in the men's grill room with their husbands after a round of golf." It could as justly have observed that after the same round of golf, men at the club aren't allowed to lunch with their wives in the women's grill room.

The Rosa Parks role in this break-down-the-barriers battle is played by the Van Sitterts, a couple who, two years ago, wanted to eat eggs together in the men's grill room rather than in the club's formal dining room. Having failed to persuade the board to change its policies-presumably because most members are happy with the single-sex socializing options-they did what any self-respecting aspirant to victimhood does today: they went whining to the government. Instead of resigning their membership and joining another club, they petitioned Arizona's attorney general to intervene. The AG was only too happy to comply, brushing aside the legal nicety that private clubs are in theory not subject to antidiscrimination laws and ruling that the club was violating those laws, since (pending renovation) the women's grill room has neither a television nor its own bar. Television and booze are available elsewhere in the club, and women can bring drinks into their grill. But in the spirit of angry young wives who tally every pair of socks that they and their husband fold, the absence of absolute tit-for-tat equality in one room's appurtenances means that women occupy an unbearable position of inferiority.

More here.

Families Crave Flexibility

by Allison Kasic
July 10, 2008, 9:35am

Terry Neese and John Goodman have a short and sweet policy brief over at the National Center for Policy Analysis in which they argue that the key to "family friendly" policies is flexibility, not rigid mandates.  Check it out here.

Ban-happy Busybodies

by Allison Kasic
July 10, 2008, 9:33am

In his latest mini-documentary over at Reason.tv, Drew Carey gives a good overview of nanny-state regulations:

The Drama Never Stops

by Allison Kasic
July 9, 2008, 11:38am

Over at NRO, Elise Viebeck reports on the latest drama in the D.C. school system -- a push to change the composition of the board that governs D.C.'s charter schools.  Details here.

In Case You Missed It

by Allison Kasic
July 9, 2008, 9:31am

Check out Michelle Bernard's 4th of July reflections over at Townhall.com.

Spellings on Vouchers

by Allison Kasic
July 9, 2008, 9:27am

In a Washington Post article, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings points to the impressive results of D.C.'s under fire school choice system:

An independent study of the program released last year confirms...parental satisfaction. The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) found that parents of scholarship children express confidence that they will be better educated and even safer in their new schools. A study by Georgetown University found increased parental involvement and student enthusiasm for learning.  

The IES study reported academic gains in reading by three student subgroups, totaling nearly 90 percent of all students. They gained the equivalent of two to four extra months of learning. An IES report last year found increased math scores among some of the same subgroups.  

This is especially impressive when you consider that nearly all of the participating students are from families that are at or below the poverty line; the average income of participating families is $22,736, only $2,000 above the poverty level for a family of four. Ninety-nine percent of the children are African American or Hispanic. Many escaped poorly performing public schools, where they worked below grade level in a city that has struggled for years to educate its young.

More here.  Unfortunately, even positive results won't stop some politicians from trying to kill the program that has helped thousands of D.C. students get a better education.

Attention, Steve Largent Listeners

by Allison Kasic
July 9, 2008, 9:21am

As promised, here are the links to the documents we discussed on the air today:

Carrie Lukas' article on equal pay

The Young Woman's Guide to Financial Independence