Newark’s School Crisis and the GOP’s War on Our Cities
We recently interviewed Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, on “The Zero Hour” on the school crisis currently taking place in Newark, N.J.
The Newark story is part of a larger pattern in which Republican governors override local governments, especially urban ones, to serve both their ideology and their corporate patrons. Today’s Republicans preach local governance, then sacrifice it to their own self-interest. That’s who they are.
Here is an excerpt of the interview.
Gov. Chris Christie’s administration is cutting school funding and turning schools over to charter organizations while his hand-picked superintendent runs roughshod over local school officials, community leaders, and the city’s children.
Christie’s authoritarian and high-handed treatment of Newark’s teachers, students, and families is of a piece with the Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-union moves in Wisconsin and Gov. Rick Snyder’s gutting of pension plans in Detroit, Michigan.
Schoolgate
Jeff Bryant looked behind Christie’s “rage at school teachers” and found that the “real ugly truth hiding behind Christie’s bluster is that schools throughout his state, especially in communities of low-income and minority schools, are descending into severely worse conditions.”
A study from the Education Law Center recently found “alarming slippage” in New Jersey’s