Trust, but verify
John’s book, The Influence of Teachers, is currently available on Amazon; you can learn more about it at the book’s official website, or, if interested in buying copies for your class or discussion group, you can consult this page.
Editor’s note: This column originally appeared in the Sacramento Bee; it was co-authored by John and Learning Matters Board Chair Esther Wojcicki.
Two Californians, one a Republican and the other a Democrat, may yet save American public education. The first is the late Ronald Reagan. The Democrat is Darrell Steinberg, a state senator from Sacramento who is very much alive.
Public education is on life support. America’s students routinely score in the bottom half on international tests, 7,000 students drop out every school day, a half-dozen large school systems have cheating scandals on their hands, and our schools are teetering on the edge of obsolescence in today’s technology-driven society.
The heart of the problem is a near-total lack of trust, which is why we bring up former President Reagan
