Tennessee Teacher and Parent Revolt Underway
It was a long time coming. Here is an excellent story from Knoxille's MetroPulse. Where is the corporate media? Hiding out with the corporate losers in charge.
Disaster Capitalism, Dugger, Indiana, and the Fall of Community Schools
By Doug MartinAs Naomi Klein shows in her frightening book Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, for decades the big plan of America’s millionaires and billionaires and the government officials they buy with campaign money has been to slash taxes (“austerity" is their pretty name for it) so that funding is drained from public services across the board. Not only does this save the
The Predictable Failure of School Improvement Grants
In the second annual data dump on the eve of the anniversary of the assasination of President Kennedy, the Duncan administration has again announced the disappointing results of its School Improvement Grant (SIG.) Once again, the SIG's failure is being released in the "take out the trash" end-of-the-week news dump.In retrospect, I was naïve about the SIG and its roots. My experiences tea
Memphis Sales Tax Increase to Fund Corporate Pre-K Defeated
Despite the fact that the Hyde Family (Autozone) spent hundreds of thousands on a media campaign, and despite the fact that the Memphis Corporate Appeal gave unlimited free space to push this plan, the voters of Memphis voted 60-40 against. The Memphis sales-tax referendum failed Thursday by an overwhelming margin of 60 percent to 40 percent, or 17,636 votes to 11,659, in the evening’s final unoff
11-21-13 Schools Matter
Schools Matter: We Can Question the Word "Grit" but Embrace Research on Nurturing the Socio-EmotionalAs I explained in a Huffington Post accompanying Angela Duckworth’s TED Talk Weekend, twenty-something years ago, I entered the classroom through alternative certification. Then and now, I was committed to the progressive education tradition. I soon recognized, however, why conservatives,