Williamson Evers : Education Next Williamson Evers : Education Next Archive

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Williamson Evers

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Author Bio:
Williamson M. Evers, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Institution’s Koret Task Force on K–12 Education, was the U.S. assistant secretary of education for policy from 2007 to 2009. In 2003, Evers served in Iraq as a senior adviser for education to Administrator L. Paul Bremer of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Evers is a past member of National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board, a past commissioner on the California State Academic Standards Commission, past trustee on the Santa Clara County Board of Education, and a past president of the board of directors of the East Palo Alto Charter School.

Articles

The Least Common Denominator

The effort to push underprepared students into academic courses has driven the rigor out of many textbooks and classrooms

Spring 2003 / Vol. 3, No. 2

Blog Posts/Multimedia

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.

03/23/2012

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.

11/03/2011

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.

10/20/2011

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.

10/17/2011

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.

10/11/2011