Last Stand for Children First

Last Stand for Children First

Education reformers made bold strides in 2010, but what's next for 2011?

I've been working for many years in education and I must say that 2010, was one of the best of them. From media getting onboard the education reform movement to movies whose power game not from misleading statistics that were left unchallenged, but from a riveting personal story of children trying to get into charter schools who unlike public schools only accept a limited number of students. Education Reform has arrived.

The year began in January, with the amazing news that Central Falls, Rhode Island had terminated the entire faculty when they balked at accepting new demands from the school district. Parents, students, and teachers were whining constantly that it wasn't the teachers' fault, but I had to wonder if the teachers were so great, why were they teaching in a district where the median income was $22,000 and had the most transient student population in the state, the highest percentage of students who don’t speak English and a high percentage of special-needs students. Sadly, the faculty was eventually hired back, but many of them were so demoralized that they have been