Kentucky: Governor Vetoes Charter Funding BillKentucky authorized charter schools in 2017 but never approved a funding mechanism. The Legislature passed a charter funding bill, and Governor Andy Beshear vetoed it. Beshear struck down House Bill 9 , sponsored by House Majority Whip Chad McCoy, on Thursday. The legislation would provide federal, state and local money for charter schools, which have been legal since 2017 but have lacked a perma
NEA: End Federal Funding for Corporate Charter SchoolsThe National Education Association issued an appeal for educators and other concerned citizens: Raise your voice to stop the federal funding of corporate charter schools ! Now is your chance to be heard. NEA writes: Email the U.S. Department of Education to advocate for the end of corporate charter schools and support accountability and transparency for all schools taking our tax dollars. All sch
Billy Townsend: Ron DeSantis And His Corrupt Friend Are a Gift to TrumpBilly Townsend remembers Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s servile devotion to Trump while he was president. Now DeSantis is positioning himself to run for President against the old fool in 2024. But Ron D. h as a serious liability: his continued friendship with a corrupt lobbyist for the charter industry. DeSantis…banished Ralph Arza in 2018 from the sight of his campaign with much public dudgeon,
Billy Townsend: Florida Pol Blames Community for Failure of His Employer’s Charter SchoolBilly Townsend is an acerbic critic of Florida charter scandals and the state commissioner Richard Corcoran, whose wife runs a charter school. He never runs out of material. In this post, he tells the story of a politician, Manny Diaz, who works for a charter chain, blaming a struggling community for the failure of his employer’s charter school, which was launched with much razzle-dazzle.
Congratulations, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson!With the support of three renegade Republicans (Romney of Utah, Collins of Maine, and Murkowski of Alaska), Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed as a new Justice of the Supreme Court. Her qualifications were beyond dispute. She is one of the most qualified members of the Court. she received the highest possible rating from the American Bar Association (Trump’s last appointee, Justice Barrett
Steven Sawchuk: States Enacting Bills to Limit or Eliminate Teaching about LGBTStephen Sawchuk, a veteran journalist at Education Week, has compiled a summary of current legislation that would limit or eliminate any teaching that includes references to LGBT topics. Legislators seem to believe that teachers are willfully indoctrinating students to become gay, which insults teachers. Teachers have become suspects, “grooming” students for a “gay lifestyle.” Legislators apparen
The Horrors of BuchaAs the Russian military regroups and moves to attack Ukrainian cities in the East, it is withdrawing from towns it controlled for more than a month. The evidence of sadism, torture, and war crimes against civilians shocks the conscience of everyone but the man who started the war, Vladimir Putin. He and he alone has the power to stop the killing. By now, we have all seen the trrrible carnage on t
“In the Public Interest”: Time to Regulate the Federal Charter School Slush FundThe nonprofit, nonpartisan group “In the Public Interest” explains the need to regulate the $440 million federal Charter Schools Program, which is awash in waste, fraud, and abuse. Did you know that the federal government spends $440 million every year to help start privately run charter schools? Did you know that some of that money ends up in the hands of people who never actually open schools o
Tom Ultican: D.C. Educators Fired for Opposing Relay “Graduate School” IdeologyTom Ultican, chronicler of the Destroy Public Education movement and retired teacher of physics and advanced mathematics, investigated a strange occurrence in the District of Columbia: Two respected, experienced black educators were fired for refusing to adopt the practices of the so-called Relay “Graduate School” of Education. Relay is not a real graduate school. It has no campus, no research, n
Carol Burris: What the Proposed Regulations for the Federal Charter Schools Program Really SayCharter school lobbyists have poured out lamentations about the U.S. Department of Education’s proposals to regulate the federal Charter Schools Program, which gives out $440 million to open new charter schools or expand existing charter schools. These lamentations are false, because the regulations have no effect at all on the 7,000+ existing charter schools. They are a good faith effort to clea
Tennessee: Memphis Charter School Will Close After Misappropriating Nearly $800,000While Tennessee Governor Bill Lee is eagerly expanding the charter school sector, a state panel decided to close a Memphis charter school because of its leaders “misappropriating” nearly $800,000. MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Charter revoked. Today a state panel agreed with the Memphis Shelby County School board to pull the plug on a local charter school. The Memphis Academy of Health Sciences (MAHS) appeale
Jeff Bryant: Inside a Chaotic For-Profit Charter SchoolJeff Bryant is a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our Schools . He is a communications consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the Education Opportunity Network, a strategy and messaging center for progressive education policy. In this article, he reveals what we long suspected about for-profit charter schools. They make money by cutting corners. He writes: It
Tennessee Legislature Passes Hateful LawsRepresentative Gloria Johnson posted a series of tweets describing the hateful legislation that her colleagues in the Tennessee Legislature have passed. Her Twitter handle is @VoteGloriaJ When I got home this weekend someone asked how things are going in Nashville, I’m not sure they were ready for my answer, but it went kind of like this… We have a “Don’t Say Gay” bill worse than Florida’s and ab
Listen to #BustedPencils Today! Michigan Public Schools Under Attack!#BustEDPencils Live tonight at 8pm EST. Michigan Public Schools Under Attack! Mitchell Robinson for State Board of Education https://www.mitchellrobinsonforstateschoolboard.org/ CALL! 844.967.2789 Listen Live: https://www.devilradio927.com/listen-live/
A Reader Sends a Comment to the US DOE about Regulating Charter Schools ProgramA writer who identifies here as quickwrit sent a comment to the U.S. Department of Education commending it for the proposed regulation of the federal Charter Schools Program, which dispenses $440 million a year to start new charter schools or expand existing ones. During the Betsy DeVos years, she showered many millions of dollars on some of the nation’s largest charter chains. Some, like the IDE
Peter Greene: “Moms for Liberty” Are Shocked by Literal Interpretation of “Don’t Say Gay” BillPeter Greene discovered an email blast from the radical rightwing group that calls itself “Moms for Liberty.” The “Moms” are outraged by a letter supposedly written by a teacher in Florida who promised to follow the letter of the “Don’t Say Gay” law and eliminate all references to gender identity from his/her/their classroom. The teacher noted that the new law bans all references to gender identi
The Real Purpose of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” BillFlorida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law has two ostensible purposes. One is to bring national attention to Governor Ron DeSantis as the heir to Donald Trump’s MAGA base. The other is to humiliate gay people, who are collateral damage in DeSantis’ pursuit of the 2024 Republican nomination. Since teachers in K-3 in Florida do not teach sex education, the law is no more than a symbolic insult. Florida’s “Don’
Leonie Haimson: Stop Congress from Passing Massive Data Collection on Every College StudentLeonie Haimson is a New York-based education activist who has two passions: reducing class size and protecting student privacy. She is co-founder of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy. She writes today in Valerie Strauss’s “Answer Sheet ” about legislation that threatens the privacy of every college student. Do your part to stop this invasion of privacy by writing your member of Congress. U
Debunking the Myth That Teachers Stop Improving After Three-Five YearsThe following post was written by Jill Barshay and reposted by Larry Cuban on his blog. It is a response to the claim by various economists that teachers don’t improve after three to five years. This claim has been used to promote Teach for America, despite their inexperience and lack of substantive teacher education. It has also been used, as the previous post about North Carolina shows, to clai
North Carolina Plans to Scrap Experience-Based Teacher Pay and Replace It With Test-Based “Merit Pay”: A Zombie PolicyWhat can you say when a state decides to adopt a policy that has failed again and again and has been conclusively discredited? I call such proposals “zombie policies,” because they fail and fail but never die. Justin Parmenter, a National Board Certified Teacher in North Carolina, writes here about a plan in his state to eliminate experienced-based pay and replace it with the obsolete practice of
