Florida: Billy Townsend Dissects Politicians’ Lame Efforts to Ban CRT and Deny RacismThis is another wonderful post by Billy Townsend about politics and education in Florida. He begins by questioning the staff of a Black Republican Congressman, Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) for using the term “redemption” in a tweet without being aware that this was the word used by white supremacists who wanted to end Reconstruction and restore the status quo of Black servitude. I have posted only abou
Mercedes Schneider: The Leading Candidate for Mayor of New York City Has a Horrible Plan for the SchoolsMayoral control of the schools was never a good idea. The current race for mayor of New York City demonstrates that it is a horrible idea. The leading candidate at the moment is Eric Adams, who was a police office, a member of the legislature, and borough president of Brooklyn. Certainly he has deep experience in municipal affairs. But his plans for education are unsound. He doesn’t know what he
New York City: Where the Candidates Stand on EducationNew York City’s public schools are controlled by the mayor. For most of the twentieth century, the schools were managed by a Board of Education, whose members were appointed by a combination of the mayor and the borough presidents and sometimes other officials (NYC has five boroughs). When billionaire Michael Bloomberg was elected mayor in 2001, he asked the legislature to turn the entire school
Chicago Regains Democratic Control of Its Public SchoolsMayoral control of the schools was always a dumb idea. The mayor of a big city has many more important priorities than running the schools. He or she cannot give the schools full-time attention. The mayor has to worry about the economy, crime, transportation, taxes, sanitation, and a thousand other things. Education is always going to be on the back burner. Mayoral control is also guaranteed to p
The “Waco Horror” of 1916Governor Greg Abbott wants Texas history taught based on truth and fact, which he believes will inculcate pride and patriotism. Does he want the “ Waco Horror” taught? What happened are true facts but even people who grew up in Waco weren’t taught about the barbaric lynching of 17-year-old Jesse Washington in 1916 for murdering a white woman. A jury of 12 white men found him guilty. “The mob of w
Texas Historian: Yes, Teach Texas History: All of It!Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently signed a law (House Bill 2497) creating “The Texas 1836 Project,” intended to teach the true history of Texas and demonstrate its core values and patriotism. Historians across the country worried that yet another state was trying to rewrite history and to prevent students from debating controversial issues, especially around the issues of racism and slavery. Br
McKenzie Scott Gives Away Another $2.7 BillionWhen Jeff Bezos divorced McKenzie Scott in 2019, she received 4 percent of Amazon shares, valued then at $36 billion. She determined that she wanted to give her staggering wealth away. In the past 11 months, she has donated more than $8 billion as direct gifts to nonprofits. None of the recipients asked for the money. None expected it. They were selected by Scott’s team, and out of the blue, got
Chris Lubienski: Why Do Markets Produce Standardization?Chris Lubienski has done comparative studies of public and private schools for years. In this latest study , he notes the paradox that choice schools tend to become standardized over time, betraying the claim that they would meet the differing needs and interests of students. DOCUMENT RESUME ED 439 519 EA 030 327 AUTHOR Lubienski, Chris TITLE Diversification and Duplication in Charter Schools PUB
Ohio: Proof That High School Students Are Smarter Than LegislatorsThis post appeared on the Network for Public Education website. Paul Huang and Olivia Peebles: It’s time to pass a Fair School Funding Plan This op-ed from Cleveland.com was written by a pair of students from Shaker Heights High School. Paul Huang is a senior; Olivia Peebles in a junior. Both are members of the Shaker Heights High School Student Group on Race Relations. In this op-ed, they lay ou
Beware the Phony Parent Astroturf Groups in Your State!Jeanne Melvin of Ohio’s Parent Education Partners has provided a useful guide to help readers discern the differences between actual parent groups and billionaire-funded astroturf parent groups. Actual grassroots parent groups rely mostly on volunteers. They want to strengthen, preserve, and protect their public schools. They lobby the state legislature for more funding for public schools. Astrot
William Gumbert: Dallas ISD Public Schools Significantly Outperform Dallas Charter SchoolsWilliam Gumbert has written a series of posts demonstrating that students who attend public schools in Texas consistently get better results than those in charter schools. In this post , he shows that the regular public schools in Dallas outperform the privately-managed charter schools. Using state records, he finds that Dallas County schools have higher academic ratings while serving a higher pr
Who Should Pay for College?In recent decades, states have reduced their subsidies to institutions of high education, shifting the financial burden to students and families. After World War II, the federal government recognized that investing in higher education would benefit society as a whole. The rise of libertarianism in the past forty years has promoted the view that the consumer, not society, should pay for what is no
Biden Breaks Another Promise to Educators and ParentsDuring the 2020 Presidential campaign, candidate Joe Biden pledged to educators that if elected, Betsy DeVos’s priorities, such as charter schools, would be gone. That’s what he said in a nationally televised forum in Pittsburgh for educators in December 2019 (start about 4:40). In Pittsburgh, he also promised to end the federal pressure for standardized testing. In his campaign documents, he pro
The Downside of Data-Driven EducationJerry Z. Muller wrote a warning about how data-driven organizations can distort their own goals and purposes. In education, we have known about the dangers of incentives for test scores for a long time. In 1976, sociologist Donald Campbell that “the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it wi
Tom Ultican: How Johns Hopkins Lost Its Reputation for Scholarship in Education and Became a Beacon of “Reform” AdvocacyTom Ultican tells the sad story of the Johns Hopkins University Education Policy Institute, w hich was once known for unbiased scholarship. As he recounts the politicization of the Institute, he explains the upside of joining forces with privatizers, disrupters, standardized testing zealots, allies of Relay “Graduate School” of Education and the charter industry. The Institute is now the recipien
My Choice for Mayor of New York CityI endorse Maya Wiley for the Democratic candidate for Mayor of New York City. There are many candidates in the Democratic primary for Mayor of New York City. Whoever is chosen will be the next mayor because the city is 3/4 Democrat and the Republican field is weak (Michael Bloomberg spent $100 million of his own money to win the mayoralty as a Republican and one of his top priorities was to persu
Chalkbeat: State Takeovers Are Usually UnsuccessfulMatt Barnum of Chalkbeat reports on a research study that concluded that most state takeovers of low-performing districts were unsuccessful. Local school boards, it was believed, must be the cause of low test scores because
