Sikivu Hutchinson: In what parallel universe does a low-income student, a homeless student or a student in foster care afford a $250 ticket for truancy?
LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy’s Fairytale
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Leonard Isenberg: Harry Truman used to have a sign on his desk, “The buck stops here.” LAUSD’s John Deasy should have one on his desk, “The buck never stops here.”
American Schools: When “The Best and The Brightest” Don’t Have the Answers
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Mark Naison: President and his chief education adviser, Arne Duncan, believed that a key problem in America’s schools was the low quality of the people working in them, they felt no need to include principals and teachers.
Idiotas: Enduring Fools
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Rudy Acuña: Arizona Governor Jan Brewer wagging her finger at President Obama recently caught my attention; it is a gesture that betrayed her IQ and upbringing. It was a punk act, and she did it because she knew she could get away with it.
Turning the Tide: An Historian’s View of School Reform
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Mark Naison: Over time, people of courage and integrity will turn the tide and begin to restore sanity to educational discourse and develop a powerful alliance of teachers, parents and students, supported first by the Occupy movement, and later by unions, religious organizations and progressive politicians.
From Ghetto to Graduate Studies
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Alvaro Huerta: Too often, corporate-minded outsiders who never experienced poverty or attended overcrowded public schools preach to inner-city Latinos and African Americans about working hard, making the right choices and being accountable for their actions as the sole means to upward mobility.
How a Crackpot Education Reform Theory Became National Policy
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Mark Naison: Someday, Test Based Education Reform will go the way of Prohibition. But not before incalculable damage is done to the nations children
Worse Off Today Than in the Sixties: Who Gives a Damn?
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Rodolfo Acuna: The major reason for the lack of progress of Mexican American and other minorities is society’s historical amnesia or more aptly its Alzheimer disorder that erases the memory of previous efforts or commitments to bridge the gap between black, brown and white – rich and poor.
Teachers Demand Arne Duncan’s Removal
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Mark Naison: We, the undersigned, a cross section of the nation’s teachers and their supporters, wish to express our extreme displeasure with the policies implemented during your administration by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
Needed: Smarter Students, Not Inflated Grades
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Robert Letcher: With this country’s students ranking only 16th among industrialized nations, it’s clear that we as a country have to work on more hot-button issues than just”cost”.
Michigan’s Free College Tuition Plan
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Tanya Somanader: Hoping to refocus priorities in 2012, Michigan’s Senate Democrats have released a new plan that puts Michigan students ahead of wealthy corporations.
How Attacks on Teachers and Government Workers Will Impact All Our Lives
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Mark Naison: The attack on Teachers Unions has been driven by foundations and funding sources traditionally associated with the Democratic Party and has been enthusiastically endorsed by the Obama Administration.
America’s Teachers See Growing Poverty Up Close
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If You Want to Know the Human Impact of The Current Recession, Ask America’s Teachers One of the things I’ve discovered in recent years is that when it comes to education policy, the last people asked for input are America’s teachers. We have a President who holds an” education summit” that includes the nation’s top [...]
The Working Class Begins to Fight Back
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Bill Leumer and Ann Robertson: The Occupy Wall Street movement drew the obvious conclusion: meaningful change will happen, not by endless waiting for the politicians to act, but by working people relying on themselves and acting collectively.
Where is the Love? Thoughts on Teachers and Teaching That Educational Reformers Don’t Seem To Get
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Mark Naison: Achieving mastery of a fixed body of material is prioritized; opening minds, healing hearts, and building confidence are widely neglected as “soft” attributes not amenable to measurement and evaluation.
Pennsylvania Teachers Work for Free after Budget Cuts
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Teachers Decide To Work For Free After Budget Cuts Leave Pennsylvania School District Without Funds For Salaries The Chester Upland School District in Delaware County, Pennsylvania suffered a serious setback when Gov. Tom Corbett (R) slashed $900 million in education funds from the state budget. The cuts landed hardest on poorer districts, and Chester Upland, which predominantly serves African-American [...]
LAUSD’s John Deasy Disses Parent Group
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Leonard Isenberg: What LAUSD has done is to front an alternative group called Parents as Equal Partners that it believes it can control, while arbitrarily and without legal authority disbanding DAC without even minimal guarantees of due process of law.
LAUSD Public School Choice: More Non-Reform
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Leonard Isenberg: What LAUSD says in terms of parent, teacher, and student input is belied by the reality of the clear legal language that again and again say the principal and superintendent maintain absolute control.
Los Ángeles 1% Maneuvers to Privatize Public Education
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John Cromshow: Privatizing education has two goals: 1) increase the number of charter schools; and, 2) weaken the teachers’ union.
Student Activists Deserve Our Thanks
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Randy Shaw: On this Thanksgiving week, the students risking physical harm and school discipline to demand greater social and economic fairness truly deserve the nation’s thanks.
Violence Goes to College
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Vijay Prashad: The priorities of the campus are clear. An Assistant Professor earns an annual salary in the low $60,000 range; a Lieutenant in the campus safety department (the man who fired the pepper gas, for instance) brings home $110,000.
Why California State University Faculty Will Strike on November 17
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Lillian Taiz: Tomorrow—November 17th—the faculty of this great university system will take the historic step of striking on two campuses—Cal State East Bay and Dominguez Hills.
Fox News Coming to Aid of LAUSD “Rubber Room” Teachers?
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Leonard Isenberg: Now since Mrs. Isenberg didn’t have any dummies for children, I wonder what Fox would want from me, since calling me a progressive would be a major understatement.
Why Teachers Must Become Community Organizers and Justice Fighters
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Mark Naison: Teacher Activists must put forth a vision of Radical Democracy which envisions an education which empowers students as critical thinkers and agents of historical change, not just as obedient test takers and which envisions schools playing a central role in neighborhoods united and mobilized to get a fair share of the nation’s resources.
The Occupy Movements and the Universities
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Mark Naison: I have never seen students on my campus so excited about anything political or artistic as they have about these Occupation movements.
Student Protesters Locked Out in Occupy DC
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Lee Fang: Friday afternoon, a group of about seventy-five students mobilized at the OccupyDC camp at McPherson Square to raise the issue of crushing student debt.
Occupy LAUSD — Again!
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On Saturday, October 22, at 4:30 p.m., teachers from across California will walk from the California Teachers Association (CTA) conference at the Bonaventure Hotel to speak and rally at the site of the Occupy LAUSD encampment in front of LAUSD headquarters.
Hundreds March for Occupy LAUSD
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Marcy Winograd: Let our schools serve the 99% of students, parents, and teachers, not the 1% of billionaires. Protect and empower public education.
It Ain’t the Teachers Nor the Administrators!
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Steve Ybarra: Everyone questions why little Johnny and Joanie can’t read. Some say the problem is with the teachers. No one wants to talk about where the problem really resides — and that is with the school district system.
Perry: Tejanos and Education Policy
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Victoria DeFrancesco Soto: Governor Perry’s lack of funding for education this year and in those previous ones are the big picture of where he stand with education and Latino in particular.
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