public school - LA Progressive

Randy Shaw: In accepting a Texas case of a white student challenging racial preferences, the United States Supreme Court is again set to reverse decades of court precedents and impose its own conservative agenda.

The Real Culprits in America’s Decline Are Shifting Responsibility to Schools and Teachers

Mark Naison: Are 28 percent of the homes in the United States under water because of union teachers? Can they also be blamed for the 44 percent Black unemployment rate in the city of Milwaukee?

Turning the Tide: An Historian’s View of School Reform

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

By Alvaro Huerta

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.

LAUSD’s John Deasy Disses Parent Group

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

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

By John Cromshow

John Cromshow: Privatizing education has two goals: 1) increase the number of charter schools; and, 2) weaken the teachers’ union.

Destroying Childhood to Save Children

By Wendy McElroy

Wendy McElroy: Laws that mandate the reporting of any suspicious contact with children will result in a dramatic increase in false or malicious accounts that harm innocent people.

Free Speech: The Outrage Override

By admin

Carl Cohen: But the freedom to speak on matters of public concern is not divisible by topic or party. We will protect that freedom for everyone, including nasty and disgusting folks, or we will lose it.

Why Teachers Must Become Community Organizers and Justice Fighters

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.

It Ain’t the Teachers Nor the Administrators!

By Steve Ybarra

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.

No Money to Fix Public Education

Leonard Isenberg: Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights Russlynn Ali tried the impossible task of trying to reconcile her optimism with her equally honest assessment that there was not only no money to fix public education, but even less in the future.

Anti-Teacher Union “Reformers” Hoisted on Own Petard

Randy Shaw: After years of teachers union bashing and corporate-led school “reform” efforts, anti-public school forces are now on the defensive. And the main reason is that the statistical measurements do not support their arguments, and even show a pattern of falsification.

Profiteering and Union-Busting Repackaged as School Reform

By David A. Love

David Love: But the larger picture here is that corporate education reform is big business. And the rightwing, plutocratic agenda – of school privatization, government austerity measures and deunionization – clashes with the needs of poor, working class, and disproportionately black and brown public school students.

Racism in K-12 Public Schools

By Jessie Daniels

Jessie Daniels: The clever, sinister thing about institutional racism in education is that it operates relentlessly on its own, like a machine, even when people of good will want it to operate differently.

Christie, Kasich Win Media Cheers While Public Pays the Price

Randy Shaw: Eliminating this human element allows Christie, Kasich and others to avoid appearing like plutocrat-serving elitists who do not care about common people.

Keeping Public Schools Public

By Craig Williams

Craig Williams: As progressives, we should also argue that educators need more funding just to deal with the increased poverty created in large part by the private sector.

Charter Schools Are Missing in Action

Mark Naison: Both directly and indirectly, Charter Schools send the message that all that is of value exists outside of your community, brought in by missionary teachers and administrators.

LAUSD, Charters, and Insanity

Leonard Isenberg: Ex-LA Mayor Richard Riordan, who is now chairman of the board of cash-strapped ICEF Public Schools, is now in the process of trying to get his board to vote control of the charter’s 15 schools over to Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, another large, local charter-school group.

More Than a Village

By Alvaro Huerta

Alvaro Huerta: While by no means a scientific study, my story is an example of how it takes more than a village for someone from the inner city to attend elite universities like UCLA and UC Berkeley.

Can Public Education Be Fixed?

By Anthony Asadullah Samad

Anthony Samad: We either invest in ourselves now, or pay later as a less competitive society. We need to fix ourselves before we nix ourselves.

Public School Budget Cuts Herald End of Equality

Mark Naison: If the only schools that can function well are in communities where parents have the resources to compensate for the budget cuts, then we are basically creating a social order where children will remain in the social position of their parents into the next generation, and where poor and working-class children are doomed by inferior training to be a servant class for the rich, if they are lucky enough to find jobs at all.

All LAUSD Students Deserve Equality of Education

By Yolie Flores

Yolie Flores: If we truly are committed to an equal education for all children, we must leave behind old and entrenched political agendas and policies and embrace the truths that every child deserves a great teacher and that great teachers must be cultivated, supported, fairly but properly evaluated, and more justly compensated.

Comparing the Modern Tea Party to the Original

By admin

Barbara Smith: The rest of America should not be intimidated by unfounded claims that Tea Partiers are the “real America” or that their values are the ones that originally won American freedom.

The Attack on American Education

By Robert Reich

Robert Reich: Over the long term, the only way we’re going to raise wages, grow the economy, and improve American competitiveness is by investing in our people — especially their educations.

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Villaraigosa Finally Speaks Up Against Teacher Union Reform Busting

By Anthony Asadullah Samad

Anthony Samad: Villaraigosa said the unions are “one unwavering roadblock to reform.” He is right on that point. They have been and will be. But he is wrong to have waited so long to speak.

Fetishizing School Chiefs Hurts Kids