Education Activism
In 1995, while one of his children was a third-grader at Escondido Elementary School in the Palo Alto Unified School District in California, Evers became an outspoken participant in the Math Wars over the teaching of mathematics. He became a leading member of the steering committee of a group called HOLD (Honest Open Logical Debate) on Math Reform and organized a publicity stunt in which a toilet was mounted on the back of a pick-up truck and driven to a protest outside the school district headquarters. There Evers ceremonially flushed the new curriculum.
From 1996 to 1998, Evers was a commissioner on the California State Commission for the Establishment of Academic Content and Performance Standards. At the Hoover Institution, he joined its Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, which was formed in 1999.
In 2001, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars. From July to December 2003, he served as a senior education adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority during the U.S. occupation of Iraq. In 2004 he was elected to the Santa Clara County Board of Education in California.
On February 8, 2007, Bush nominated Evers to be an assistant secretary of education. His confirmation by the Senate was announced on October 17, 2007. The eight-month delay was largely attributed to enemies he made during the Math Wars.
Evers has written several opinion columns for well-known publications such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Christian Science Monitor.
Read more about this topic: Williamson Evers
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“A good education ought to help people to become both more receptive to and more discriminating about the world: seeing, feeling, and understanding more, yet sorting the pertinent from the irrelevant with an ever finer touch, increasingly able to integrate what they see and to make meaning of it in ways that enhance their ability to go on growing.”
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