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
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 Academy schools) will not be required to hire professional, certified teachers. This is yet more evidence that charter schools are not public schools. Teachers in p
Michael Gerson was a speechwriter for President zgeorge W. Bush. He does not admire Trump, to say the least. Here, he offers advice on dealing with a president who is out of touch with reality, impulsive, uninformed, has no ability to steady or unite the nation, and is unfit to lead.
Wherever there is a bipartisan consensus for charter schools, the Koch brothers see the state as ripe for expanding vouchers. Now they are targeting Colorado, where they have developed a strategic plan for the state. Leading Democrats, such as wealthy Congressman Jared Polis and former State Senator Michael Johnston, have led the charge for charters and schiool choice (both have announced they ar
As you know, I was for many years involved in the rightwing corporate reform made cement. As I realized that the real end game was not to “reform” public schools but to privatize them, I became a skeptic. Then as I saw that all of their strategies were failing, I jumped ship. I am often asked why I changed my mind, and I try to explain that I realized that the reform movement was a hoax, with no
Roy Turrentine, a teacher who frequently comments on the blog, wrote this commentary on how testing warps teaching: “When I first started teaching, I would occasionally get off the subject for days. One geometry problem sidelined us for three days. Children would offer solutions and I would publicly follow their logic until it obviously failed, then we would take another suggestion. “It has been
CBS News aired a great segment on the importance of rural public schools. They are the heart of the community. CBS News went to an impoverished community in Appalachia and interviewed students and the principal, who is also the school bus driver. The small rural public school in Letcher County doesn’t need competition. Most of its students live below the poverty line, yet the school is one of the
Ed Berger, a retired teacher who lives in Arizona and is active in the struggle to save public schools, has written a powerful post about the billionaire-funded movement to destroy our democracy. It begins like this. I urge you to read it all: “Within the core of our freedoms, lie the avenues powerful individuals use to take away the rights of citizens and the controls of government designed and
In Washington State, the highest state court ordered the legislature to establish a new and equitable funding program for public schools. The legislature has not acted. The court is fining fining the legislature $1 million a day. The legislature
