Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog:
Schooling in the Ownership Society
Schooling in the Ownership Society
Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk
Schooling in the Ownership Society
Name dropping
The throat-slash sign? Really? It's a 15-yard penalty in the NFL.“It’s one more desperate attempt at trying to be relevant in places where he’s not relevant. You can’t look at a list of insults to certain parts of town — closing police stations, closing mental health clinics, closing schools — and make it seem like this one act is gonna change something right before an election. People are not so
SEP 18
Deasy didn't start L.A.'s school militarization, but he didn't end it either.
Fred KlonskyReaders have begun to ask me about LAUSD's acquisition of machine guns, grenade launchers and armored military vehicles and its connection with current embattled Supt. John Deasy. Deasy is already up to his ears, and ought to be, over his discriminatory suspension policies, the district's wild expansion of privately-run charter schools, and the ongoing ipad scandal. But some have sugg
SEP 17
New school supplies from the Pentagon. Deasy in L.A. grabs some M16s and grenade launchers.
All San Diego schools got from the Pentagon was this one lousy armored vehicle.But the Wall St. Journal reports that LAUSD did much better. Supt. John Deasy has stocked up 61 M16 assault rifles, three grenade launchers, and a mine-resistant vehicle from the Pentagon.But the district is getting rid of the grenade launchers, which it never intended to use to launch grenades or use in a school settin
Rahm Love and the Mess at CPS
GOOD READ...And at home I found a separate culture of intellectual achievement. This is the tradition of Carter G. Woodson, Frederick Douglass, and Malcolm X. It argues for education not simply as credentialism or certification, but as a profound act of auto-liberation. This was the culture of my childhood and it gave me some of the greatest thrills of my youth. -- Ta-Nehisi Coates, "Acting F
SEP 16
The rats are having a field day at CPS
Dead rat, one of many at a Southwest Side elementary school having problems with rodents and roaches since janitorial services were privatized.Aren't the 476 custodians being thrown out of their jobs by Rahm and his Aramark subcontractors, represented by SEIU Local 1? Can't help but wonder, where the hell is the union in all this? Why has it taken an all-out principal's and parent's revolt to push
SEP 15
Weekend Quotables
Bethlehem, Pa. NAACP President Esther Lee "We could end up with segregation in another form," [Esther Lee] said of charter schools. "It's not 1909, but it's close." -- Express TimesChicago principal, Troy LaRaviereThe [custodial] cuts mean “residents of Chicago lose out, and the corporations profit from our losses." -- Chicago Public Schools to lay off 476 custodiansKaren
SEP 12
Lesson from Teachout: It won't be as easy for Rahm to buy the next election
You've really got to go back to Bloomberg's narrow escape in his 2009 victory in the NY mayor's race over relative unknown, Bill Thompson. Bloomberg poured $90 million of his own fortune into the race, a sum without equal in the history of municipal politics that gave him a 14-to-1 advantage in campaign spending. He won by only 5%.Without Bloomberg's billions in the race, money wasn't a big factor