Want a right-wing Hoover Institution intellectual bully calling the shots on No Child Left Behind and other important education policies? That will be the case if Williamson M. Evers is confirmed as assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy development at the Education Department.
Educator Tapped for Planning Post Finds That Old Foes Have Surfaced
By Paul Lewis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 11, 2007; A15
"If he was a child in school, you would think he had attention-deficit disorder," said Delaine Eastin, then California's superintendent of public instruction, the highest-ranking education official. "I'm talking about not letting people talk -- being rude, being unprofessional, thinking that because his voice was loudest he should dominate," she said, adding that she knows several people who experienced Evers's "temperament." Like her, she said they are now briefing influential friends in Washington about his unsuitability for the department's post, but doing so quietly.
Want a right-wing Hoover Institution intellectual bully calling the shots on No Child Left Behind and other important education policies? That will be the case if Williamson M. Evers is confirmed as as assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy development at the Education Department.
Educator Tapped for Planning Post Finds That Old Foes Have Surfaced
By Paul Lewis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 11, 2007; A15
He has helped revamp the Iraqi school curriculum, worked as a Libertarian Party activist, advised both of President Bush's campaigns and led an intellectual drive for stricter curricula, testing and accountability in schools...
in California, where he made his name as a back-to-basics advocate of rigid educational standards...
"Rude, brusque, overbearing, pushy -- he's basically an intellectual bully," said Erwin Morton, one of several parents in the Palo Alto school district who defended teachers whom Evers and others denounced in1993 for the textbooks they selected and how they taught algebra.
It was concern about the schooling his own children were receiving in that district that moved Evers, a political scientist by training, to turn parent-activist and to focus his scholarly work on education policy. He brought a "traditionalist" approach, in which he rejected local teachers' preoccupation with teaching concepts over facts and their worries about students' self-esteem. That angered the likes of Morton, who describes Evers as "the single most harmful person" to schools in the area because he drove teachers away. He recently wrote to senators expressing his concerns about Evers's appointment.
"If he was a child in school, you would think he had attention-deficit disorder," said Delaine Eastin, then California's superintendent of public instruction, the highest-ranking education official. "I'm talking about not letting people talk -- being rude, being unprofessional, thinking that because his voice was loudest he should dominate," she said, adding that she knows several people who experienced Evers's "temperament." Like her, she said they are now briefing influential friends in Washington about his unsuitability for the department's post, but doing so quietly.