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Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Barbara Madeloni’s Battle Against Charter Schools | Radio Boston

Barbara Madeloni’s Battle Against Charter Schools | Radio Boston:

Barbara Madeloni’s Battle Against Charter Schools





Barbara Madeloni has been president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association since May 2015. (Courtesy Barbara Madeloni)




Last week, Gov. Baker introduced his bill to expand charter schools in the state. While the charter school debate is nothing new in Massachusetts, longtime charter school advocates like John Connolly, co-founder of the education startup 1647, say it’s different this year. In fact, he attributes it to one person.
“Barbara Madeloni. She’s really made it clear she’s going to draw a line in the sand and the MTA is going to put their full effort into this,” he told Radio Boston. Barbara Madeloni has been president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association for just one year, after she won in an upset election last May.
We’ve held conversations with charter school advocates over the past two weeks, so we now turn to the other side of the debate.

Guest

Barbara Madeloni, president of the Massachusetts Teachers’ Association. She tweets @BMadeloni.

More

  • “Standing at Brooke Mattapan Charter School, Gov. Baker announced his ‘Act To Improve And Expand Educational Opportunity’ Thursday.”
  • “John Carroll and Tom Keane go behind the headlines in our week in review.”
  • “The bill would also allow charter schools — publicly funded schools that often operate independently of local districts — to give preference in their lotteries to applicants who come from low-income families, live in specific areas, have special needs, or are learning English. Critics have contended that charter schools do not do enough to serve special education students and non-native-English speakers.”
  • “In testimony before the committee Tuesday, Walsh laid out a plan that would expand charter schools at a slower pace than in Baker’s proposal. The Walsh proposal would allow the creation of charter school seats in the lowest-performing districts at a rate of half of 1 percent of the local school district budget each year for a decade.”

Other stories from this show:
Barbara Madeloni’s Battle Against Charter Schools | Radio Boston: