With A Brooklyn Accent:
Why Charter School Leaders Are Behind Attacks on Teachers Unions and Public Schools
If you ever wonder why famous charter school leaders like Eva Moskowitz or Steve Perry don't just run their schools quietly and let the results speak for themselves and instead devote much of their time attacking teachers, teachers unions and public schools, consider this. When the hiring freeze in NYC public schools was lifted a few months ago, a large number of charter school teachers applied fo
SEP 03
Where Are You From? A Guest Post by Malaya Velasquez Saldana
“Whereare you from?” the ubiquitous question posed to me since I learned to formulate my first English sentence, has overtime accrued the weight of a multitude of implied questions, and exclamations. Now by 22 years old the weight of that question is so heavy with implications, and assumptive self-erasing experiences I hear it and laugh. The kind of laugh that your mother makes when you lie to her
SEP 02
Why The Obama Administration Won't Back Off Its Disastrous Education Policies
As I was sitting watching the US Open after a day of preparing for classes, I started thinking of why state after state, with the encouragement of the US Department of Education, keeps subjecting teachers to evaluation systems which are humiliating, time consuming and inaccurate, despite evidence that shows that their main effect is to drive good teachers out and turn teaching into a revolving
In the US " Improving Teacher Quality" really means Humiliating and Firing Veteran Teachers
All over the nation, the imperative to "improve teacher quality" has morphed into a campaign to marginalize, humiliate and force out veteran teachers. Not only has this caused tremendous distress to the individuals thus targeted, it has deprived our public schools of a priceless source of knowledge and cultural capital and has contributed to huge turnover among new teachers who are depri
AUG 26
Defend Gus Morales!
If you were going to "build a teacher" in a largely working class town where the majority of those enrolled in the public schools are students of color, one of the models you would work from would be Augustin Morales. Born in Holyoke Mass., part of that town's large Puerto Rican community, Gus spent several years in the military before returning to school to become a teacher. He was some