By Dr. Terry Wallace | West Virginia Watchdog
Would you knowingly allow anyone to inject your child with a dose of a known poison? Would you knowingly poison your own child?
Don’t answer too fast, because that is exactly what’s happening every day across America.
Cigarette smoking kills, wounds and damages children just as certainly as any unbalanced [...]

By Amy Purpura | West Virginia Watchdog
Earlier this month, we ran an OPED written by Dr. Terry Wallace titled “Time for Increasing Student Performance” that has received recognition by the Time to Succeed Coalition. In the article, he mentions the need to increase quality time on task during instruction in order to increase student performance [...]

By Terry Wallace | West Virginia Watchdog
Several states finally got the memo and have just announced plans to add 300 hours, the equivalent of about 50 days, to the school year as part of a State/Federal pilot program.
As a youngster, I lived in fear of this notion.  Summer was a time of escape to a [...]

By Terry Wallace | West Virginia Watchdog
There seems to be nearly universal brouhaha over the lunch program in our schools these days. How could things get so far out of whack over something so simple?
During my student days at Neffs Elementary School, lunches cost fifteen cents and included whole milk, either chocolate or white, from [...]

By Dr. Terry Wallace | West Virginia Watchdog
Reports of deep cuts in most state budgets are all too common these days and are passed down to each level of government, including counties and school boards.  One of the primary culprits is the blank check that is Medicaid, the growth of which is crowding out other [...]

By Amy Purpura | West Virginia Watchdog
I’m sick and tired of being from a mediocre state where my generation lacks the freedom to pursue individual excellence.
There, I said what many of my fellow peers are thinking.
As a member of Generation Y or the Millennial Generation, I’m a 22 year-old college graduate who faces bleak employment prospects [...]

By Steven Allen Adams | West Virginia Watchdog
CHARLESTON — Teachers’ unions and other interest groups crammed into the office of the Senate Education Committee Chairman to hammer out language for a committee substitute to Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s proposal for teacher evaluations and a mentoring program.
A Senate Education subcommittee chaired by state Sen. Richard Browning [...]

By Steven Allen Adams | West Virginia Watchdog
CHARLESTON — It’s been over two weeks since the start of the West Virginia Legislature’s 2012 general session, but there has been very little talk about education reform.
That is, until yesterday and in an unusual place.
Instead of hearing school officials questioned in one of the two education committees, [...]

By Steven Allen Adams | West Virginia Watchdog
CHARLESTON — A large portion of the state’s work-eligible residents aren’t looking for work anymore, while other workers are suffering from drug addiction.
Members of the Senate Economic Development Committee heard from Commerce Secretary Keith Burdette today. Committee chairman Richard Browning asked Burdette to talk about the state’s efforts [...]

By Jeff Rhodes | The Olympia Report
Olympia, Wash. — Why is it, Bob Wise wonders, that people who wouldn’t dream of carrying the same cell phone that seemed so high-tech back in 2001 cling tenaciously to a education model that hasn’t changed noticeably in 100 years?
“We’re living in a transitional time,” the former West Virginia [...]