We Fight Low Information
Mark Naison: We must also unleash the genius of the business world into the system by subcontracting test development and evaluation to corporations with the resources to do these well and have all school employees wages and salaries targeted to performance the way virtually all business do.
Mark Naison: the most tragic thing about this kind of austerity is that school districts have shown they are far more willing to use increasingly scarce funds on testing and evaluation rather than art, music, sports, gym, and school counselors and librarians.
Mark Naison: Policies which claim to be in the “public interest” that only affect other people’s children and affirm race and class privilege, should be subject to the most careful kind of scrutiny.
Mark Naison: Some people are astonished that a 92 percent white state, which is heavily agricultural, voted for President Obama in two straight elections.
Mark Naison: The transformative role that Occupy activists have played in coordinating relief to the hardest hit victims of Hurricane Sandy has shown me that the Occupy networks that survived the evictions were much stronger than I realized.
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.
Mark Naison: Obama supporters who want progressives to take precious energies away from grass roots movements to re-elect the president are, whether intentionally or not, sabotaging long term possibilities of democratic change.
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.
Topping this week’s list is, once again, Mark Naison, the Fordham University professor and editor of With a Brooklyn Accent, who writes so passionately on issues of education and race..
Fordham Professor Mark Naison’s article, “Where is the Love? Thoughts on Teachers and Teaching That Educational Reformers Don’t Seem To Get,” attracted the most readers for articles published between January 7 and 14 by LA Progressive.
I am going to continue to support the Occupy movements, which I consider the best hope for democratic change in the last 40 years, in every way I can
South LA Reintegration Calls for Increased Funding for Community-Based Prison Realignment Support Services
Dan Bluemel: Women’s rights advocates entered a Walgreens pharmacy this week in downtown Los Angeles to protest the Obama administration’s efforts to restrict access to the emergency contraceptive commonly known as the morning-after pill.
Robert Reich: Is the central goal of his second term to achieve a grand bargain on the budget deficit? Or progress on gun control? Or restore jobs? Or reform the immigration laws? It is difficult to tell.
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Are Our Best Teachers an Endangered Species?
Mark Naison: Given the fault lines that have been revealed in our society by Hurricane Sandy, the last election, and the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, do we really want to make our schools so impersonal and bureaucratic that the best teachers leave