New Rule: Pencils Down | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) - YouTube

New Rule: Pencils Down | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) - YouTube:

New Rule: Pencils Down 

In a surprising move, Bill sticks up for children in his editorial New Rule.

‘Real Time': Bill Maher Defies Himself to Come Out Swinging for Kids (and Striking Teachers)

Bill Maher used the “New Rules” segment of Friday night’s episode of “Real Time” to do something even he couldn’t believe he was doing: advocating for kids.

Specifically, Maher weighed in on the ongoing wave of teachers strikes in states like Kentucky and Oklahoma, likening underfunded schools and underpaid children to neglectful parenting. “There is a revolt brewing in the teacher’s lounge these days, and it’s long overdue. #TimesUp, meet pencils down,” he said.

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But of course, Maher also noted how weird this topic is for him, as he famously can’t stand kids.

“I know, me sticking up for kids? It’s like Mike Pence fighting for gay adoption,” Maher joked.

But, Maher said, he was recently struck by a social media post from a teacher in Arizona, who shared her pay stub, that went viral. “Probably because she’s one of the people we entrust with our children. And she makes $320 bucks a week.”

“How do people, even the burdened taxpayer, justify this? We were all kids, we remember early learning,” he continued. “You have those moments imprinted on your brain. A teacher was your first mentor, your first role model.”

Or, said, “if you grew up in Florida, your first lay.”

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Maher noted teachers in West Virginia went on strike for a 5 percent pay raise. That’s “not a lot, but it helps when you have to pay for your own paper, your own pencils, and now, your own bullets.”

“Here’s an idea, don’t give the teachers guns, give them a living wage. They’re not asking for the world, just enough of a raise so they don’t have to drive an Uber three nights a week,” Maher said. “It isn’t  Continue reading: ‘Real Time': Bill Maher Defies Himself to Come Out Swinging for Kids (and Striking Teachers)

Meet the Activist at the Heart of the U.S. Teacher Protests | Need to Know | OZY

Meet the Activist at the Heart of the U.S. Teacher Protests | Need to Know | OZY:

MEET THE ACTIVIST AT THE HEART OF THE U.S. TEACHER PROTESTS

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

Because the teachers’ movement is on the rise.

This week, thousands of people descended on the Oklahoma state Capitol, holding signs that declared, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance!” and “Give us the tools we need so we can succeed!” It was the latest in a string of teacher walkouts in favor of increased education funding. And if you squinted hard enough at the picket lines in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Illinois and Puerto Rico in recent weeks, you’d have seen the same diminutive 60-year-old New Yorker: Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

Long one of the most powerful — and controversial — figures in the labor movement, Weingarten has emerged as a face of a nationwide battle for more resources for public education that has taken a bold, even desperate, turn after years of budget cuts by states and school districts. West Virginia teachers won a 5 percent pay raise after shutting down the state’s schools for nearly two weeks. Oklahoma saw its third day of walkouts Wednesday, with educators demanding more classroom funding — even after the legislature tried to avert the walkout with a $6,100 teacher pay raise. Kentucky teachers are storming their Capitol this week to protest budget cuts and pension changes. More states are likely to join in. When asked why teachers are striking now, Weingarten says, “Because the time for passive resignation is over.”

OUR WEAPON IS OUR VOTE, AND OUR MISSION IS THE 2018 ELECTIONS.

RANDI WEINGARTEN

The situation has become so dire in Oklahoma that many public schools have been forced to operate on a four-day week. Textbooks are severely outdated and falling apart, and buildings are in disrepair, including defective heating systems that force kids to bundle up head to toe in the winter. Weingarten says she spoke to an Oklahoma social studies teacher who has kids that are forced to sit on the floor because there aren’t enough desks. “The inequity for kids in this country is real,” she says.

The daughter of a schoolteacher who went on an illegal strike when Weingarten was in high school, the labor leader is rooted in education and activism. Her suburban high school outside New York didn’t want for much — from rigorous coursework to ample extracurriculars — but when she later taught history at Clara Barton High School in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, she was Continue Reading: Meet the Activist at the Heart of the U.S. Teacher Protests | Need to Know | OZY:

Teaching beyond the test: Diane Ravitch, Jesse Hagopian | Books | santafenewmexican.com

Teaching beyond the test: Diane Ravitch, Jesse Hagopian | Books | santafenewmexican.com:

Teaching beyond the test: Diane Ravitch, Jesse Hagopian

About a quarter of a century ago, the federal government started requiring states to test student proficiency in basic subjects in order to receive certain kinds of federal funding. Up until then, standardized testing was a ritual performed for just a few grade levels, but it soon became an annual rite of passage. Critics of frequent testing maintain that classroom time is now occupied with test prep instead of the kinds of creative learning that make kids excited about knowledge, while supporters of these methods insist that teachers and schools be held financially and professionally accountable for the results of their efforts.

Diane Ravitch, an educational policy analyst and professor at New York University, used to be an enthusiastic supporter of standardized testing, but changed her tune in her 2010 book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. In Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools (2013), she takes a strong stand against profit-driven charter schools. According to Ravitch, this is not a partisan issue, because both Democrat and Republican presidential administrations have emphasized testing — to the benefit of private enterprises and at the expense of subjects that are not really testable, such as the arts. Ravitch talks with Jesse Hagopian, a public-school teacher and editor of More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing (2014), as part of the Lannan Foundation’s In Pursuit of Cultural Freedom series on Wednesday, April 11. 

Ravitch and Hagopian are in conversation at the Lensic Performing Arts Center (211 W. San Francisco St.), at 7 p.m. on April 11. Tickets are $8 ($5 students and seniors), tickets santafe.org. Teaching beyond the test: Diane Ravitch, Jesse Hagopian | Books | santafenewmexican.com: