UPDATE: The culture that created the Atlanta cheating + Glen Brown hits a quarter of a million site visits with a great how-to-talk-to-your-legislator post. | Fred Klonsky

Glen Brown hits a quarter of a million site visits with a great how-to-talk-to-your-legislator post. | Fred Klonsky:

The culture that created the Atlanta cheating scandal.

by Fred Klonsky

Today’s big education story is the indictment of former Atlanta school superintendent Dr. Beverly L. Hall. Dr. Hall was one of 35 Atlanta educators indicted Friday by a Fulton County grand jury. Dr. Hall, who retired in 2011, was charged with racketeering, theft, influencing witnesses, conspiracy and making false statements. Prosecutors recommended a $7.5 million bond for her; she could face up to 45 years in prison.
Back in February of 2012 I addressed the cheating issue in a piece written for Occasional Papers 27, a publication of Bank Street College of Education.
In the article I address the reform culture that has created the conditions for scandals like the one in Atlanta.
Also included in the collection are essays by William Ayers, Gail Boldt, Greg Dimitriadis, Jeff Duncan-Andrade, Ann Haas Dyson, Celia Genishi, Marc Lamont Hill, Kevin K. Kumashiro, Deborah Meier, Erica R. Meiners, Pedro Noguera, Diane Ravitch, Raynard Sanders, Gil Schmerler, Peter Taubman

“If We Look to Buy the Cheapest Paper, Why Not the Cheapest Teachers?”
by Fred Klonsky
Around 1972 I was working at the UniRoyal Tire and Rubber factory in the City of Commerce, an industrial suburb of Los Angeles. The front of the factory faced the Santa Ana freeway. For some 

Glen Brown hits a quarter of a million site visits with a great how-to-talk-to-your-legislator post.

by Fred Klonsky

My Illinois blogging buddy Glen Brown has been posting since 2011.
Today he hit a quarter of a million site visits with this great post.

Meet and talk to your legislators

Focus on the solutions for the problems legislators have created and perpetuated in Illinois: the state’s structural revenue deficit and pension debt. (Focusing on the legislators’ proposed “pension reform” keeps their message of challenging constitutionally-guaranteed benefits and on cutting teachers’ earned pension benefits in the forefront and reinforces their skewed conversation).

Change your legislators’ discussion from the “pension reform” focus to their need to “reform” the existing pension ramp, to eliminate tax loopholes for “Tax Increment Financing Districts” and for large corporations, to tax services and to broaden the tax base, to establish a graduated income tax (by 2015), to increase taxation on the wealthy, and to make the required payments to the pension systems instead of shifting the normal costs to school districts and colleges, to name a few solutions. In other words, legislators need to honor their contract with '