Denyse O'Leary

John Stossel thinks so: I visited another charter chain, American Indian Public Charter Schools in Oakland, Calif., that gets similar top results, also at lower cost. “Kids in American Indian Public Charter Schools score so far above the average for the state for public school children that there isn’t even a word for it,” says Andrew Coulson, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. Those schools use methods different from the charters in Harlem. For example, they pay some kids to tutor other kids. Both charters do something that regular public schools rarely do: fire teachers. One charter principal calls it “freeing up a person’s future.” (“Exciting Schools” Townhall , September 21, 2011) Of course, part of this Read More ›

In “The Believing Brain: Why Science Is the Only Way Out of Belief-Dependent Realism” Scientific American (July 5, 2011), Michael Shermer informs us, dependency on belief and its host of psychological biases is why, in science, we have built-in self-correcting machinery. Strict double-blind controls are required, in which neither the subjects nor the experimenters know the conditions during data collection. Collaboration with colleagues is vital. Results are vetted at conferences and in peer-reviewed journals. Research is replicated in other laboratories. Disconfirming evidence and contradictory interpretations of data are included in the analysis. If you don’t seek data and arguments against your theory, someone else will, usually with great glee and in a public forum. This is why skepticism is a Read More ›