It's comfortable living in a cocoon -- associating only with those who share your views, reading journalism and watching news that only reinforce them, avoiding those on the other side of the cultural divide.

Liberals have been doing this for a long time. In 1972 the movie critic Pauline Kael said...

A mass firing by a Rhode Island high school superintendent shows how leaders with backbone can eventually force union leadership to accept a new reality.

Education leaders often act lazily, blaming union contracts and federal regulation rather than confronting the problems they have the capacity to solve.

Public school teacher compensation is roughly 50 percent above private sector levels. In addition to merit pay, fundamental reforms to help schools hire, promote and fire teachers according to the best interests of students is needed.

Overhauling the teachers contract will be a bruising struggle--one that will succeed only if the community commits to seeing it through.

It is a view as ubiquitous as it is simplistic: To improve public education, pay teachers more—a lot more. Union officials, education reformers, scholars, laypeople, and politicians of all stripes endorse this principle in one form or another.

Shifting government workers to 401(k)-style plans would offer greater transparency and keep benefits in line with the private economy.

Last week, Manhattan's appellate court gave the New York City Department of Education the go-ahead to release the names and "value-added score" rankings of thousands of the city's teachers. These scores are designed to quantify the direct impact of teachers on student performance.