Trump tweeted that he absolutely opposed renaming military bases named to honor Confederate heroes. The renaming was proposed by military leaders and the Defense Department. Hours later, the Republican Senate Armed Services Committee voted to rename the bases. The Democratic Appropriations Committee Will attach a requirement to the $740 billion defense budget that the bases must be renamed. Will
A federal appeals court overturned a landmark ruling that affirmed the right to an education. Education is necessary for full citizenship, so voters can be fully informed. However the appeals court did not agree. In April, a 3-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a landmark decision in the Detroit literacy case, Gary B. v. Whitmer, holding that there is a “fundame
William Doyle and Pasi Sahlberg have reimagined the school: Let the children play! They are the authors of a new book with that title . They write in an article for CNN: When the novel coronavirus is no longer as great a threat and schools finally reopen, we should give children the one thing they will need most after enduring months of isolation, stress, physical restraint and woefully inadequat
Please join me in a zoom discussion with Julian Vasquez Heilig , dean of the College of Education at the University of Kentucky. We are talking On June 17 at 7:30 pm. Julian Vasquez Heilig is a brilliant researcher and champion of equity. JVH had a stellar academic career at California State University, where he also served as chair of the education committee of the state NAACP. He was recently c
Now that Joe Biden is assured the Democratic nomination, lots of advisors will clamor to get his ear. As Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect warns, he should be careful about from whom he takes advice. If he cares about rebuilding America’s public schools, he should avoid anyone connected to Race to the Top, which was a hyper-version of George W. Bush’ failed No Child Left Behind. He should
Veteran political journalist reflects on the leftward turn of Biden’s thinking. In this article, which appeared in The New York Review of Books, he says that Biden is no longer dreaming of restoring the Obama administration, but looking instead to FDR as a model of activism in the midst of crisis. He informs us that Biden and Sanders were communicating during the final days of the Democratic prim
At Trump’s insistence, the Republican Party has moved its convention from North Carolina to Jacksonville, Florida. The reason: North Carolina imposes health restrictions due to the pandemic. Twenty thousand people in an arena did not seem like a good idea to state health officials, especially since it seemed likely that many would follow Trump’s model and refuse to wear a face mask. The rate of c
Last night, I had a Zoom talk with Amy Frogge, who has served for eight years on the Metro Nashville school board. We talked about charters, vouchers, the Dark Money that infiltrated school board races, and the promising things happening in Nashville. She is soon leaving the board to become executive director of Pastors for Tennessee Children. Amy is one of the heroes featured in my book SLAYING
Jan Resseger writes here about the decision by Minneapolis and other school districts to remove police from the schools. She begins: In the aftermath of the tragic police killing of George Floyd and the widespread protests of police brutality that have followed, the Schott Foundation for Public Education comments: “We want to lift up one ray of hope in this dark moment: The Minneapolis Board of E
In this post, Mercedes Schneider interviews Annie Tan , who joined Teach for America in 2011, and, with inadequate training, was assigned be a teacher of special education in Chicago. Her experience was, she says, a disaster. One of Tan’s responses: Tan: I will never forget the first day when we had our celebration, and the CEO of Chicago Public Schools came and made a speech to us. It felt very
The Alabama Charter School Commission decided to revoke the charter of Woodland Prep, which had not yet opened. Blogger Larry Lee has the inside scoop. He wrote: In the end, it was as much a story about a very rural community that simply refused to quit fighting and standing up for what it believed in strongly. It was about a community that takes pride in its public schools and refused to be bull
This is one of the most important posts you will read today, this week, this month. If you want to understand the hoax of so-called “education reform,” read this post. Share it with your friends. Tweet it. Put it in Facebook. It rips
