DeVos’ world gets stranger by the day. After hearing from rape victims, DeVos and her top civil rights official have decided to champion the rights of those accused of raping the women. The New York Times calls this “a new look” at the
Arthur Goldstein, a high school teacher in Queens, New York, has often criticized the UFT for not taking the militant stands that Arthur prefers. But now, he says, it is time to stand together and fight. Unions are facing an existential threat to
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is the most powerful figure in state government. He is also the most loathsome person in the government. He had a talk show before he was elected to the State Senate. He was the Rush Limbaugh of Texas. His views are far right. He hates public schools. He has a passion for charter schools and vouchers. He doesn’t care about charter school corruption. He will not allow a
Good news from Detroit, the lowest performing urban district in the nation. After years of outsourcing students to privately managed charter schools, the new superintendent says he is considering no longer authorizing charters but focusing instead on improving traditional public schools. Imagine asking a business to jumpstart competitors and you can see how wacky the current policy is. I am very
Mark Naison is a professor of African-American Studies at Fordham University in New York. He writes: How Charter Schools Have Stifled Educational Innovation and Fought the Opt Out Movement Although charter schools were originally promoted as a vehicle to encourage educational experimentation, their meteoric growth in influence has actually coincided with a REDUCTION in innovation in schools becau
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos invested in a military technology company owned by her son-in-law. Her brother Erik Prince is advising the Trump administration on military strategy. I naively assumed that once appointed to the Cabinet, all outside business dealings were suspended.
Retired teacher Karen Gaddis won a surprise victory last night for the Oklahoma legislature, flipping a seat that has been held by a Republican since the early 1990s. Congratulations, Karen! Oklahoma will have a Teacher in the House! We will take this country back, one seat at a time.
As readers of the blog know, our friend Phyllis Bush is fighting cancer with humor and determination. In this post , she brings us up to date on her activities, her treatment, and the kindness of friends and strangers.
I heard about a product called the Amazon Alexa. I wanted to learn more, went to Amazon, and found this fabulous thread about two electronic devices, the Alexa and the Echo. “Question: I have 2 children, one named Alexa and the other named Amazon. Will this present any problems? A: My kids do not respond to voice commands, do yours?!? I am selling my kids on eBay and buying the Echo. tomh A: My d
Dr. Priscilla Chan sounds like a lovely young woman. She is married to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and seems to be running the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, which will dispense billions of dollars. She is a graduate of Quincy Public Schools in Massachusetts so we can hope that she is not reflexively hostile to public education. Do you have any advice for her?
This is a soul-searching article about the resegregation of schools in the South. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, racial discrimination was prohibited in any federally funded program. But in 1964, there was very limited federal aid to schools. However, in 1965, Congress passed the Elementary and Zsecondary Education Act, and there was quite a lot of federal money for schools th
Amy Frogge ran for the Metro Nashville School Board in 2012 as a concerned mom who was also a lawyer. She was unaware of the pitched battle about charters and privatization. She had the simple goal of improving public schools, which made her an enemy of the privatizers. She ran again last year and was re-elected. Both times, she faced candidates who outspent her by vast sums with out-of-state ref
Blogger Peter Goodman reports that a last-minute deal was struck in the closing hours of the legislative session in New York State. Charter schools authorized by the State University of New York (which includes Eva Moskowitz’s Success
