Mark Naison: Teachers are some of the most selfless, generous people in our nation. They deserve better than what they are currently getting from our political leaders and mass media
The Chicago Teachers and Their Students’ Test Scores
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Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer: No standardized test can possibly penetrate or measure this domain, and the attempt to apply such a ruler only reveals the ignorance of those who pretend to know better.
R.E.S.P.E.C.T.- What Teachers Everywhere Gain From the Chicago Strike
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Mark Naison: Chicago teachers have shown the way, not only to force changes in policy, but to create a new narrative about what is really going on in the nation’s schools.
Graduate Them, Don’t Incarcerate Them!
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Diane Lefer: Los Angeles Unified School District has cut suspension rates in half, in part thanks to a new policy that was adopted after tireless advocacy by community groups
Chicago Teachers Union Vs. Mayor Rahm Emanuel (The Democrats’ Scott Walker?)
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Joseph Palermo: The 29,000 striking Chicago teachers are sending the message to Emanuel that their teacher bashing and privatization schemes for public education have become so onerous and destructive to the teachers’ mission and profession that they have no choice but to fight back.
Grade Inflation; Education Degradation
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Walter Brasch: A recent UCLA study revealed that although students are studying less than ever, grades of A- and A in high school classes are the most common grades.
Stubborn Facts About Obama Education Policies That No Amount of Convention Sugarcoating Can Cover Up
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Mark Naison: If you watched the Democratic Convention, you would never know that the Obama Administration’s education policies were extremely controversial with America’s teachers and had provoked outrage among many of the nation’s most distinguished education scholars.
Time For “Testing As Child Abuse Suits” to Fill the Nation’s Courts
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Mark Naison: When a massive threat emerges to the health and well-being of the nation’s children, action must be taken. Protecting children from abusive testing is the REAL civil rights cause of our time.
All Eyes on Chicago’s Teachers
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Shamus Cooke: If the Chicago teachers’ union — 26,000 members strong — goes on strike, many critical yet ignored political issues will go into the national spotlight, exposing nastiness that many politicians and labor leaders would like ignored until after the presidential elections.
Assessing Charter Schools: Follow the Money
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Mark Naison: Here are common sense criteria to judge charter schools intent to educate or to undermine public schools
Algebra: Unbiblical Arab Plot
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John Peeler: It’s time for patriotic Americans to stand up and say, “No More!” The Three Rs were enough for our Founding Fathers, and the Three Rs are enough for us today.
Trailer Trash Fantasy League
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Sikivu Hutchinson: Given the fever pitch xenophobia, nativism and anti-undocumented immigrant hysteria in the U.S., it is no surprise that the Anaheim school’s Seniores event was allowed to roll on for three years with virtually no incident or protest.
Vouchering an Educational Adventure
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Walt Brasch: Had to. He was at the top of the salary schedule. Besides, he was teaching about the rise of the middle class and how unions helped get better wages and benefits for the masses. That’s just downright unpatriotic. He refused to be a team player.
LA Unified’s New Schools Linked to Better Elementary Student Performance
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Kathleen Maclay: Thousands of children moving into new elementary schools over the 2002-2008 construction period enjoyed strong achievement gains that equaled up to 35 additional days of instruction
Defending Educational Rights in Tucson: Murder in Progress
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Rudy Acuna: The suppression of free speech in Tucson has gone unrestrained despite the hype that we are a national minority.
Driving Out Our Best Teachers
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Mark Naison: How you can improve the quality of a profession by subjecting its members to public ridicule and abuse, in everything from campaign speeches, to editorials, to Hollywood films, is a mystery that I am too dense to unravel
How “Race to the Top” Has Magnified the Obesity Problem in Poor and Working Class Neighborhoods
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Mark Naison: On Fordham Road, most of the people including the children, are heavy, some to the point of obesity.
California’s Public Higher Education Must Be Protected
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Joseph Palermo: I have been astonished to see how fast and careless some baby-boomer administrators and ambitious faculty members can be when aggressively pushing “reforms” that would virtually gut the university system their parents’ generation built.
The Hypocrisy of Current Initiatives to “Improve Teacher Quality”
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Mark Naison: Teach For America has done NOTHING to improve the quality of the teaching profession. And their policies are symptomatic of an ideological trap that all Education Reformers have fallen into.
Not Every Bronx Tale Has a Geoffrey Canada Ending
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n his memoir, Fist, Knife, Stick, Gun, Geoffrey Canada describes growing up on Union Avenue in the Morrisania section of the Bronx as a harrowing experience — a place where bullies terrorized young people and where no institutions, certainly not the local public schools, offered refuge or protection. It was only when Canada’s family moved [...]
Bank Lending Frenzy Left Borrowers Buried in Student Debt
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Marian Wang: Some banks and lenders played fast and loose with student loans, aggressively marketing them to borrowers who couldn’t afford that amount of debt
Let’s Stop Overlooking the Impact Poverty Has on Urban Students
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Mark Naison: I would like to see urban schools emphasize community involvement, artistic expression, and physical and emotional health on the part of their students.
Open Versus Closed Education
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Steve Hochstadt: The goal of a liberal arts education is not mainly the accumulation of knowledge, but an understanding of how knowledge is created and the ability to create new knowledge by oneself.
On the Occasion of My Retirement as a Teacher in Urban America
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Retired teacher, Caitlin Casement, speaks out about conditions in and out of the classroom that make it almost impossible for urban students to succeed.
The Army Occupying America’s Public Schools
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Mark Naison: Many teachers, parents, union leaders, and school administrators secretly despise the policies being imposed on them; but see no way off opposing them with sacrificing their careers or children’s welfare.
Battle Corporate Schools Locally to Win Nationally
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Mark Naison: The first step is to join the discussions about how public education is being destroyed wherever it takes place.
Why Business Leaders Should Not Manage Schools
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Mark Naison: All across the country, we have more and more teachers who hate their jobs because their job security has been destroyed, and more and more children who hate school because of the constant testing
Romney Fumbles Public Education Opportunity
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Unai Montes-Irueste: Romney is at a serious disadvantage when it comes to “devil in the details” discussions about education policy, especially in areas of overlap with President Obama’s policies on immigration,
Picking Next Cal State Chancellor Right
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Lillian Taiz: We urge the CSU Trustees to adopt the more inclusive and transparent process like the one being undertaken by the Community College System.
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Defending Teachers and Teaching
Mark Naison: Every time I walk into a classroom, I am trying to do for my students what the best teachers I had did for me; to capture my imagination to such a degree that what went on in that class would be etched in my memory for life.