Rally Against Bloomberg 4th Term
From the NYC Parent blog: Subject line: Join us Thurs 12 noon at City hall., July 18: No 4th term for Bloomberg! Dear Parents, grandparents and Education Activists, I hope that you can come and help turn out fellow parents for an important rally and press conference at noon tomorrow, Thursday, July 18, on the City Hall steps to protest Mayor Bloomberg’s attempt to effectively have a fourth term r
A Synonym for “Reform”
This reader says that reformers almost never protest budget cuts. Another word for reform these days is……….neglect. “I think the “abandonment” idea is really powerful. As the parent of a public school kid in Ohio, I really do feel abandoned by both my state government and the federal government. Ordinary local public schools need not apply! The crazy state and federal focus on the 5% of schools t
What You Need to Know About CPS Budget Cuts
As we learned in earlier posts (and see here), Chicago Public Schools cuts the central office budget every year. It is ruthless with the central office budget. No one works at headquarters except possibly Barbara Byrd-Bennett. This reader has studied the budget and offers an overview: “Since 2008, CPS has claimed $1.3 BILLION in central office budget cuts. That’s based on an annual budget of som
Outrage: How to Destroy Neighborhoods While Making a Profit
Wendy Lecker, civil rights attorney and director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, read an opinion article in the New York Times and was outraged by its recommendations. Here is her analysis: It seems like these days, one has to be wary of anyone claiming to “help” poor neighborhoods. An oped in the New York Times on July 13 by Michael Rubinger extolled the virtues of federal “new market tax cr
For Shame, Mitch Daniels
An earlier post described efforts by then-Governor Mitch Daniels to make sure that Howard Zinn’s leftist history of the United States was not taught in Indiana’s public schools. But even more alarming is his attempt to shut down Professor Chuck Little of Indiana University, a vocal critic. Little had the audacity to defend public education, which Daniels did his best to privatize. When governmen
LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 7-17-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: Now the Gates Foundation Is Destroying Higher EducationWith $36 billion, the Gates Foundation has too much money, too much power, and not enough common sense nor willingness to listen to those who warn that they are doing harm to basic social institutions. Now the foundation has decided to destroy the civilizing and humanizing miss
