NYSAPE, the New York State Alliance of Parents and Educators, is a coalition of 50 parent and educator groups across the state. The board of NYSAPE has called on the New York Board of Regents to demand the resignation of State Commissioner MaryEllen Elia. Here is the statement: “New Yorkers Call on the Board of Regents to Remove Commissioner MaryEllen Elia for Failure to Protect Children “For the
The Washington Post reports a secret meeting between Erik Prince–brother of Betsy DeVos and owner of private militia Blackwatwer–and a close ally of Putin, after the election, to develop a back-channel means of communicating. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/blackwater-
Emma Brown of the Washington Post reports that Candice Jackson has been selected to lead the Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education. Jackson, a lawyer, gained notoriety for attacking Hillary Clinton for defending a
PSAT/SAT day is Wednesday April 5 this week in NY schools and many other public schools in states around the country. These exams are now required in at least 9 states, but are given in many more states and districts, including NYC. The College Board is unethically if not illegally amassing a huge amount of personal student information through the administration of these exams and selling it for
In Chile, solar power is the wave of the future. “On the solar farms of the Atacama Desert, the workers dress like astronauts. They wear bodysuits and wraparound sunglasses, with thick canvas headscarves to shield them from the radiation. “The sun is so intense and the air so dry that seemingly nothing survives. Across vast, rocky wastes blanched of color, there are no cactuses or other visible s
If there is one issue where the WSJ is fanatical, it is school choice. It published an editorial this morning (behind a pay wall) declaring that all the recent negative studies of the effects of vouchers must be wrong, because the Milton Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice says so, and whatever the Friedman Foundation says on the subject of vouchers must be right. Right? Wrong! The Friedma
Vanity Fair tells the inside story of the Steele dossier, the one that was taken seriously by the FBI and CIA and shared with the President and the President-Elect. Drip, drip, drip.
Legislators in California have filed four bills that would hold charter schools to the same standards as public schools. http://www.utla.net/news/new-legislative-push-charter-school-accountability Expect powerful resistance from the California Charter School Association, which prefers no regulations at all, no accountability, total freedom to choose their students, to exclude the ones they don’t
Gary Rubinstein has a somewhat startling habit of insisting on accuracy. He gets very annoyed when educators or pseudo-educators make claims that are false or only half-true or embellishments. I have worked with him on several occasions
Arizona Republicans are renewing a drive to expand that state voucher program, despite a recent state audit reporting misspent funds and despite a survey showing that most voucher students are leaving high-performing schools in wealthy districts. In last year’s legislative races, Betsy DeVos’s lobbying group spent heavily to elect pro-voucher candidates, more than any other independent political
At a recent meeting at the Heritage Foundation, conservatives warned that federal control of school choice would be very dangerous. “A panel of education policy experts agree the Trump administration appears to be moving toward some form of federal management of school choice, but warns that attempts to influence school choice policy from Washington, D.C. could undermine the president’s stated go
The Los Angeles Times is publishing a series of editorials about Donald Trump. This is the first . It was published yesterday. It was no secret during the campaign that Donald Trump was a narcissist and a demagogue who used fear and dishonesty to appeal to the worst in American voters. The Times called him unprepared and unsuited for the job he was seeking, and said his election would be a “catas
After I posted the story about the forthcoming PBS Series called School Inc. , which promotes privatization, reflecting the views of the privatization movement, I shared the story with investigative journalist David Sirota. He recalled the time that his journalism compelled PBS to return millions of dollars to billionaire financier John Arnold for a program he funded about “the pension crisis.” A
David Kirp, professor of public policy at Berkeley, often contributes articles to the New York Times about successful public schools and districts. His latest is a terrific article that you will enjoy about an innovative public school district in Oklahoma. At the Union Public Schools district in the eastern part of Tulsa, Okla., “more than a third of the students are Latino, many of them English
I just contributed $200 to this just cause. If we crowd source our support, parents in Florida can fight the unjust law that prevents their children from advancing to fourth grade unless they take and pass the state test. Children who opt out will be retained. Children who received all A’s all year will flunk. Support the parents fighting this stupid state mandate: Dear Friends of Public Educatio
I posted this article a few days ago with the warning that I could not vouch for the source. I have since checked out the website–WhoWhatWhy–and conclude that it is a highly reputable source for honest investigative journalism. I think if you scan the website, see who writes for it, who edits it, who is on the board of directors, you will agree this is not fake news. Here is the mission statement
Mercedes Schneider wrote an excellent study–“A Chronicle of Echoes”–of the echo chamber of corporate reform. In this post , she reviews one of the entrails in the belly of the beast. It is called the Pahara Institute, which claims to train leaders who will create the high-quality, high-performing schools that all children need. If you look at the list of big-name participants, which includes loca
Laura Chapman wrote the following expose of a new series that will appear on PBS. It must be public television’s effort to curry favor with the Trump administration, as it reflects the extremist agenda of Betsy DeVos, who is intent on creating a free market in publicly-funded schooling. Since Trump’s budget has proposed to eliminate funding for public television, this series may be a demonstratio
Darren Walker is president of the Ford Foundation. He was recently honored at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and used the occasion to explain how his exposure to the arts changed his life. He said, “As a little boy, I lived with my
