Clean, Green Yellow (School Bus) Machine

Clean, Green Yellow (School Bus) Machine:

CLEAN, GREEN YELLOW (SCHOOL BUS) MACHINE

In Sacramento, California, the Twin Rivers, Elk Grove and Sacramento City Unified School Districts are receiving 29 total electric school buses along with associated charging infrastructure, which demonstrates a zero-emissions school transportation market that despite still being in its infancy is growing up fast.

Twin Rivers Unified School District is upbeat about the purchase. It will bring buses with zero emissions against the new federal regulations as well as the tough state requirements of California. Tim Hooks, director of transportation for Twin Rivers, said the district is receiving a total of 16 electric school buses, with eight already in the fleet.

The first eight are eLion all-electric school buses manufactured by Canadian company Lion Bus. The remainder are TransTech Type-A school buses with electric drives provided by Motiv Power Systems.

“Currently we have a temporary infrastructure that will charge five buses at a time,” he added. “We are working with our local power company to upgrade infrastructure.”

Funded in-part by a grant from the California Air Resources Board, the project is touted as the largest U.S. deployment of zero-emission school buses to date, to provide sustainable transportation and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is representative of what the industry is likely to see more of over the next decade as manufacturers, dealers, technology providers and school transporters respond to the impending Phase 2 federal Greenhouse Gas Emission regulations, which, barring any governmental delay or repeal, target a reduction in NOx emissions to the 0.02 g/bhp-hr standard. It is set to go into effect in next year. 

The regulations aim to achieve long-standing goals to lower overall emissions from diesel engines. In short, Phase 2 mandates manufacturers and dealers of buses and associated technology to offer the specified power of the bus with more efficient and clean technology. Technologies have been introduced to use less fuel, burn cleaner alternative fuels, or consume no fuel at all via electric power.

The regulation took effect by executive order of President Obama. However, the possibility exists that it could be repealed by the new administration. President Trump ordered a review of fuel efficiency standards for cars in mid-March, implying that such regulation serves as an obstacle to automobile manufacturing and jobs.

Footing the Bill

For schools, however, new technology and especially new buses are costly. Funding assistance for new technology and new assets, though limited, is available from several sources.

Joe Annotti is a consultant with Gladstein, Neandross and Associates, which specializes in market development for low-emission and alternative fuel vehicle technologies, infrastructure and fuels for both on- and off-road applications. Annotti, a former U.S. EPA staffer who was a chief architect of the National Clean Diesel Rebate Program, speaks of two principal sources of funding to replace aging buses.

The Diesel Emissions Reduction Act (DERA) was passed by Congress as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 with the goal of reducing diesel exhaust from older engines used in on- Clean, Green Yellow (School Bus) Machine:

Louisiana Educator: Lawsuit Aims to Vacate the Position of State Superintendent of Education

Louisiana Educator: Lawsuit Aims to Vacate the Position of State Superintendent of Education:

Lawsuit Aims to Vacate the Position of State Superintendent of Education

Ganey Arsement is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit to be filed today to have the courts declare the position of Superintendent of Education vacant subject to appointment by BESE and the Louisiana Senate.

Here is the Educate Louisiana post about this lawsuit. Arsement deserves great credit for researching the Louisiana Constitution and state law that govern the appointment of various state offices including the Superintendent of Education.

The following is my fact sheet based upon research of the actual results of White's administration and leadership of K-12 education in Louisiana. In addition to his failure to produce real results, White has engineered a demolition of the healthy teaching and learning environment in our classrooms and converted it into a mind-numbing exercise in constant testing and test-prep. Many of our most dedicated and effective teachers have been driven from the profession, and many others have lost their love of teaching as this testing mania grows each year!

Louisiana School Superintendent John White’s

Performance Record

Should John White be reappointed as State Superintendent of Education?

Qualifications? John White was appointed state superintendent of schools in January 2012 with the backing of Governor Jindal Louisiana Educator: Lawsuit Aims to Vacate the Position of State Superintendent of Education:

Schools Matter: Diane Ravitch's Very Selective Blame Game

Schools Matter: Diane Ravitch's Very Selective Blame Game:

Diane Ravitch's Very Selective Blame Game

Jim Horn

Until just a few years ago, no one would have guessed that Diane Ravitch would ever become the unofficial spokesperson for the NEA and AFT’s corporate education empowerment project.  Diane was viewed as a conservative historian and policy insider, and as such, she was hostile to union priorities.  By 2008, however, Republicans had moved so far Right, with the Democrats in hot pursuit of the same racist voters, that Diane suddenly found herself a liberal by doing nothing other than remaining steadfast to her Republican ideology. 

In the days leading up the Republican Party becoming the proudly-racist Tea Party, Ravitch’s conservative historical scholarship had followed the same elitist, happy-talk trails that official education historians like Elwood P. Cubberley blazed in the early 20^th Century, when the official education history was told in idealized narratives that celebrated the unquestioned success of American schoolmen, just as it ignored or denied the deeply racist, classist, and unjust containment and miseducation of the non-white, non-male, and non-privileged citizens and immigrants. 

Before she traded in Republican ed reform despotism for the Democratic ed reform despotism, Ravitch had defended the Republican brand of corporate education reform as crucial to what she viewed as public education’s continuing perfection project, and she had been a fierce critic of educational historians who pointed to the role of schools in reproducing social and economic inequality. Historians like Joel Spring and Michael Katz she viewed as anarchists and radicals, as their more inclusive and critical views of educational history questioned Ravitch’s romanticizedSchools Matter: Diane Ravitch's Very Selective Blame Game: 

DeVos Grilled Over LGBTQ Discrimination At Indiana Voucher School | WBAA

DeVos Grilled Over LGBTQ Discrimination At Indiana Voucher School | WBAA:

DeVos Grilled Over LGBTQ Discrimination At Indiana Voucher School

U.S. education secretary Betsy DeVos weathered a volley of questions this week about a Bloomington, Indiana, private school that receives state-funded vouchers but reserves the right to deny admission or discontinue enrollment to students from lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender families.

Bloomington’s Lighthouse Christian Academy was held up as an example of a private school that receives tax dollars but reserves the right to discriminate against students, as federal lawmakers questioned DeVos over a budget that plans to spend $1 billion on a federal school choice agenda.

“Is there a line for you on state flexibility?” said Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Massachusetts, referring to states choosing how to spend federal dollars. “You are the backstop for students and their right to access a quality education.”

DeVos refused to say whether her office would withhold funds from private schools that discriminate against students. It’s the latest development in the national dialogue over school vouchers, which allow families to receive tax dollars to pay for private school, and which the Trump administration has targeted as its educational priority.

Watch the full exchange:

Attorney Brian Bailey, Lighthouse Christian Academy spokesperson, defends the school’s admission policy. Bailey was former Gov. Mike Pence’s state budget director.

“It’s a Christian school and as a Christian school the school is committed to training DeVos Grilled Over LGBTQ Discrimination At Indiana Voucher School | WBAA:

The Bill Press Show: They are taking money from things that work, for things that don't - Lily's Blackboard

The Bill Press Show: They are taking money from things that work, for things that don't - Lily's Blackboard:

The Bill Press Show: They are taking money from things that work, for things that don’t

The Trump Devos education budget cuts billions of dollars from programs that work, to fund things that don’t work.

 The Bill Press Show: They are taking money from things that work, for things that don't - Lily's Blackboard:

Jeff Bryant: DeVos Budget Robs from Poor Kids to Fund Schools That Discriminate

DeVos Budget Robs from Poor Kids to Fund Schools That Discriminate:

DeVos Budget Robs from Poor Kids to Fund Schools That Discriminate

Jeff Bryant

You and I witnessed history last week, and not the good kind.

At a House subcommittee hearing In Washington, DC, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was called to defend to Congress the Trump administration’s education budget which cuts education options for poor kids and increases options for parents to leave public schools.

DeVos called this a matter of making “tough choices” and “putting an emphasis on the programs that are proven to help students.” But tough questioning from Democratic Representatives revealed the real priority of this administration isn’t pragmatic; it’s ideological – and it’s a particularly ugly ideology our federal government has historically been focused on dismantling.

More specifically, Trump’s education budget cuts $9.2 billion (13.5 percent) of federal outlays to public schools, and eliminates or phases-out twenty-two programs.

Both Republicans and Democrats expressed concerns with cuts in federal support for afterschool programs, Special Olympics, arts education, gifted and talented students, teacher training, class size reduction, career and technical education, and programs targeted at helping disadvantaged students and veterans successfully complete high school and enter higher education.

But the sharpest exchanges with the Secretary focused on the budget’s significant funding increases for alternatives to public schools, namely, charter schools and school vouchers that allow parents to withdraw from the public education system and send their children to privately-operated schools at taxpayer expense.

Trump’s budget proposes to increase direct federal aid to charter schools by $500 million, devote $370 million to research and promote vouchers, and shift $1 billion in Title I funds to states and districts that allow families to pull their children out of public schools, taking DeVos Budget Robs from Poor Kids to Fund Schools That Discriminate:

It’s time for a Human Rights Act | Seattle Education

It’s time for a Human Rights Act | Seattle Education:

It’s time for a Human Rights Act

I wrote the following letter today to the Mayor and City Council in Portland, Oregon where I live at this time.

To the Mayor of Portland and the City Council,

The actions of one person this weekend who killed two men who were protecting two young women from the angry and racist remarks and actions of that individual made me begin to think seriously about what is free speech and what is termed “hate speech”.

I consider “hate speech” words that suggest or incite harmful actions against others  whether the suggestion is covert or overt. I do not consider that kind of speech “free speech”.

Everyone who lives in our city, state and country has the right to feel safe. Would you feel safe if someone called out you or someone in your family as different and therefore a person who should be eradicated or removed from this country?

If someone who is mentally unstable yells out bigoted and negative comments in public about someone based on how they look, their skin color, apparent religion or sexual orientation, with an overt or covert implication of violence, is that freedom of speech?

Our regulations and laws, are created to provide guidelines in how we are to interact with each other so that all in our society can have a relatively peaceful and productive existence. Therefore, actions such as murder, theft, bodily harm to others and rape have been out-lawed.

It appears that we need another guideline now in how to treat all with dignity and respect and provide a safe environment for everyone to live in with a ban on words It’s time for a Human Rights Act | Seattle Education:

School privatization critic Diane Ravitch offers advice to the Democrats - World Socialist Web Site

School privatization critic Diane Ravitch offers advice to the Democrats - World Socialist Web Site:

School privatization critic Diane Ravitch offers advice to the Democrats

Diane Ravitch, the widely read education historian, author and advocate for public education, titled a May 23 blog, “Don’t Like Betsy DeVos? Blame the Democrats.” The full-length opinion piece was also published the same day in New Republic with the underline “The Democratic Party paved the way for the education secretary’s efforts to privatize our public schools.”

For those who might think to themselves, “Finally the truth at last!” there is more to the story. Ravitch aims not to discredit the Democratic Party, let alone encourage a political break from this party of Wall Street and war, but to advise it.

The article states that Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has generated “a tsunami of liberal outrage” for good reason. Ravitch emphasizes that the secretary is hostile to the very idea of public education. Indeed, Trump’s budget proposals demand $10.6 billion in cuts, measures that could deny tens of thousands of young people the chance to go to college, put the community college system on rations and slash K-12 school programs across the country. The day prior to the release of the budget, DeVos promised “the most ambitious expansion of education choice in our nation’s history.”

Ravitch’s article then refers to the stage-managed “grilling” of DeVos by Senator Al Franken at her confirmation hearings, and the reaction of other Democrats like Senators Cory Booker and Michael Bennet who decried her nomination as an “insult” to the nation’s children.

Diane Ravitch

“Listening to their cries of outrage, one might imagine that Democrats were America’s undisputed champions of public education,” Ravitch says. “But the resistance to DeVos obscured an inconvenient truth: Democrats have been promoting a conservative ‘school reform’ agenda for the past three decades,” she states.

The education historian substantiates this by briefly reviewing the record, starting with the support of Bill Clinton for standardized metrics linked to monetary rewards, which ultimately laid the groundwork for No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

As usual, Ravitch does not spare Obama. “The Obama years saw an epidemic of new charters, testing, school closings and teacher firings. In Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed 50 public schools in one day. Democratic charter advocates—whose ranks include the outraged Booker and Bennet—have increasingly imported ‘school choice’ into the party’s rhetoric,” she states.

She hones in on the money trail: “[S]upport for mandatory testing and charter schools opens fat wallets on Wall Street. … In 2005, Obama served as the featured speaker at the inaugural gathering of Democrats for Education Reform, which bundles contributions to Democrats who back charter schools: Among its favorites have been those sharp DeVos critics George Miller, Michael Bennet, and Cory Booker.”

Ravitch’s narrative highlights the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party, its open alliance with Wall Street hedge funds and its thoroughly reactionary attacks on public education in the interest of profit-taking.

The problem with her argument, however, is the “inconvenient fact” that School privatization critic Diane Ravitch offers advice to the Democrats - World Socialist Web Site:

The Most Offensive F-Word in Education - Teacher Habits

The Most Offensive F-Word in Education - Teacher Habits:

The Most Offensive F-Word in Education

I was speaking with a teacher about the new reading program her district adopted. She lamented that administration had told the teachers, in no uncertain terms, that the program was to be implemented with strict “fidelity.” She said the word with unmistakable disdain. Like how most people say, “phlegm.” It’s no wonder. There isn’t a teacher in the world that likes the word fidelity. It’s the most offensive F-word in education, and for damn good reason.

The reason administrators demand fidelity is blatantly obvious but never admitted. Ask your curriculum director why you can’t supplement when you see the need, and you’ll be lied to. He’ll prattle on about a “guaranteed and viable curriculum” and how it’s “research-based” and “Board-approved.” He’ll tell you it’s Common Core aligned.

All nonsense.

The real reason districts demand fidelity is they don’t trust their teachers. They don’t respect their abilities, dedication, or decision-making. They believe that, left to their own devices, teachers will ignore the standards, use ineffective practices, and, I don’t know, run around with their pants around their ankles while singing Neil Diamond songs. Put simply, when a district tells you to teach with fidelity and never supplement based on your observations and analyses of student outcomes, it’s sending a clear message that they don’t view you as a professional.

Such a district’s opinion of you is so low it’s willing to put the education The Most Offensive F-Word in Education - Teacher Habits:

Hollywood's Teacher Narratives Are Reductive - The Atlantic

Hollywood's Teacher Narratives Are Reductive - The Atlantic:

Hollywood's Reductive Narratives About School

“Popular teaching storylines thwart the call for systemic change by suggesting a few superstars can fix the system’s problems single-handedly.”

Most teachers I know hate the movie Freedom Writers, in which a Long Beach, California, teacher leverages writing to convert apathetic students into crusaders for justice. Though it had not yet been filmed in 2003, when I was a first-year teacher in South Central Los Angeles, I had absorbed enough teacher-savior narratives to reject their simplicity but internalize their winning idealism. These storylines can infiltrate schools, tainting a teacher’s expectations of both her power and her complicated students—like T, my 10th-grader who toted a pink teddy bear with a safety pin jammed through its ear. Trying to teach T confirmed for me the perils of these simplified narratives.

The bear, like the pick tucked in T’s afro, seemed a vaguely punk statement of insouciance. Other boys respected his I’ll-go-crazy-on-your-ass aura, maintained through spontaneous outbursts of kicking, shouting, and cursing. Afterwards, he would sink, sighing, into the nearest chair, cross his legs, and pat his hair. When cheerful, T asked to borrow things from the girls in a loud stage whisper: “Can I see your mirror? Mirror!” He spoke in either a breathy falsetto or a rumbly roar. When once I told him to speak in his real voice, he snapped, “This is my voice!” My description so far, while true, caricatures T as a problem student, impossibly alien. I don’t know what to do with T on the page any more than I did in the classroom.

Though I left his school a decade ago, in my mind, T is still refusing to slide out through the gym doors in his borrowed graduation robe. Now as a teacher in North Carolina of mostly white students, whose parents mostly watch Fox News, I teach “The Danger of a Single Story,” a TED talk in which the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie asserts that single stories are created when people are shown to be “only one thing” until “that is what they become.” My limited understanding of T was partly a result of the single story I’d heard about kids like him. The story of low-income, urban students of color has been told too often by white, middle-class people like me who are cast as main characters in pat, triumphant narratives endorsing the redemptive single story of teaching.

These simplified stories distance teachers from their students, reinforcing the power imbalance created when a teacher arrives thinking she already knows who her students are and what miracles she should perform. The caricatures—so Hollywood's Teacher Narratives Are Reductive - The Atlantic:

Superintendent Vacancy Becomes a Matter of Law – Educate Louisiana

Superintendent Vacancy Becomes a Matter of Law – Educate Louisiana:

Superintendent Vacancy Becomes a Matter of Law

Over the last couple of months, I have been in constant contact with both the governor’s office and the senate in regards to the appointment of Superintendent of Education, John White. There is a general agreement that appointive positions are intended to be temporary extensions of the current administration. It isn’t uncommon for someone to be reappointed by an incoming administration; however, in White’s case, that has not been done. Some of the senate staff attorneys have differing opinions about how and when appointments should terminate. In order to resolve the matter, we have solicited the courts for clarity. On Tuesday, May 30th, a motion for declaratory judgement was filed in the 19th Judicial District of East Baton Rouge Parish. With myself listed as the primary plaintiff, fourteen other plaintiffs from across the state have joined me in asking the courts to declare the process and intent of the law.  The intent is to establish a guideline for both BESE and the Louisiana Senate to take action.

Supt. John White.

If you have been following my blogs over the last couple of months, you know that an important deadline is fast approaching. In summary, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) is tasked with appointing a superintendent of education with a 2/3 majority vote. The appointment, and subsequent contract, can’t extend past the appointing authority’s term of election. Our current superintendent of education, John White, was appointed by the previous BESE board, and his appointive term ended on January 12, 2016.

As per his contract, and Louisiana law, White is permitted to continue in that capacity until BESE appoints a new superintendent. As per Revised Statute 24:14, if an appointing authority fails to appoint and submit an appointee to the senate for confirmation, the current appointee may continue to serve until the last day of the second regular session following the expiration of the appointed term. At that time, the position is considered vacant. Per the law, BESE has until June 8th to appoint and submit for confirmation, or the superintendent of education position is considered vacant.

I have made several personal pleas to BESE both via blog posts and personal communications. I have been told by several BESE members that there is no interest in addressing White’s appointment, and they believe they are within their rights to keep White on a month to month contract, indefinitely. There are a couple of misconceptions about this process that I Superintendent Vacancy Becomes a Matter of Law – Educate Louisiana:

The Trump Education Budget Will Dangerously Favor "Fast Food" Teachers | HuffPost

The Trump Education Budget Will Dangerously Favor "Fast Food" Teachers | HuffPost:

The Trump Education Budget Will Dangerously Favor “Fast Food” Teachers

With drastic cuts to education spending, the Trump administration will do irreversible damage to teacher quality nationwide.

The average hourly pay for food service workers and cashiers in the United States at McDonald’s is $8.50. At Starbucks, employees earn an average of $9.43 an hour, but shift supervisors can make over $12 an hour. Full-time associates at Walmart are paid $13.38 an hour. Customer service associates earn $13.54 an hour at Costco and as much as $13.78 an hour at Home Depot. However, in many school district in the United States, substitute teachers, in charge of helping to educate our children, are paid less than $13 an hour and have barely any qualifications. This is part of the trend to outsource and privatize what goes on in our schools, something being promoted by the Trump/DeVos education regime, and something that in no way counts as “education.”

CNBC

Home Depot is hiring.

A major player in the fast-food teacher industry is Kelly Educational Staffing. In Florida, it is active in Orlando, Jacksonville, and Tampa-Saint Petersburg. It also provides substitute teachers in Massachusetts,

According to the Kelly website, requirements to be a Kelly substitute are minimal: an associate’s degree or 60 college credits, the ability to read and write in English, “passing” criminal background checks and a drug test, “completion of an informational session on substitute teaching to be conducted on the day of your interview,” “successful completion of a behavioral interview and a mandatory orientation conducted by Kelly Educational Staffing,” and the willingness to work for next to nothing without any benefits. The online training program takes two hours and includes a quiz.

People with these “qualifications” are then expected to provide “instruction,” encourageThe Trump Education Budget Will Dangerously Favor "Fast Food" Teachers | HuffPost: 

 

DeVos's "school choice" is corporate death trap for working families, educators - Liberation News

DeVos's "school choice" is corporate death trap for working families, educators - Liberation News:

DeVos’s “school choice” is corporate death trap for working families, educators

On May 22, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos gave a speech in Indianapolis at a summit hosted by the right wing pro “school choice” lobbying group, the American Federation for Children. DeVos’s speech championed the Trump administration’s Federal Education Budget and its concomitant expansion of so-called “school choice” as the “most ambitious” in history.

AFC spokesman Tommy Schultz said of the Trump-DeVos education plan: “We see that this a really significant opportunity for her to lay out a vision for what she sees as educational choice going into the future for all 50 states.”

DeVos claimed that the Trump administration would be somehow “making history” in trying to transform the nation’s allegedly “closed and antiquated educational system.”

While there are transformations that need to be made within the education system, DeVos is not qualified to be making them. The policies she supports deepen the structural inequities that exist within public education as it stands. The kind of transformation DeVos and Trump speak of is a neoliberal transformation that would strengthen the hegemony of corporate control in education, deepen segregation, and destroy the teachers’ unions all across the nation.

Today’s mainstream “reformers” are reformers of the ruling class elite and the corporate interests they represent. While these ruling class mouthpieces speak of “reform” on the one hand, what they do in deed is deform the DeVos's "school choice" is corporate death trap for working families, educators - Liberation News:

Why California’s next election will be a tug-of-war on education

Why California’s next election will be a tug-of-war on education:

Why California’s next election will be a tug-of-war on education

Sandra Lowe reminisced about the good old days as she addressed a roomful of Democratic activists at the California party’s annual convention last week in Sacramento. It used to be, the teachers union leader told the crowd, that it didn’t take much to win a school board race: a short statement in the election handbook, a little money for some mail and the shoe-leather to knock on doors and talk to voters.

Now, Lowe said, things are different. Wealthy donors have put big money into shaking up public education by backing candidates willing to challenge union orthodoxy. And the impact they had this month on the school board race in Los Angeles — ousting a union-backed incumbent and electing a new majority that favors charter schools — is likely to reverberate across California.

“It’s not just an L.A. situation,” said Lowe, a California Teachers Association consultant. “This is going to happen everywhere.”

The future of public education in California has become a tug-of-war between different camps within the Democratic Party. Democrats aligned with organized labor – who dominated local and legislative races for many years — are now facing formidable challenges from Democrats who see overhauling some union rules as a key to improving education.

The Democrat vs. Democrat split that played out in the Los Angeles school board election also emerged in several legislative races last year. Now, as California looks toward the election of a new governor and a new school superintendent next year, the fight over public education is bound to get hotter.

California made major changes in the schools during Jerry Brown’s last two terms as governor — putting a new Common Core curriculum in place and revamping the funding formula to send more money to schools serving needy children. Yet academic achievement remains dismal. Slightly more than half the state’s students cannot read and write at their grade level, results from last year’s testing shows, and 63 percent aren’t meeting standards in math.

Each camp has its own view of the solution. Teachers unions generally argue that society should Why California’s next election will be a tug-of-war on education:

I finally agree, college isn’t for everyone - The Hechinger Report

I finally agree, college isn’t for everyone - The Hechinger Report:

I finally agree, college isn’t for everyone

White nationalist activity on campus has shown me that higher education doesn’t need to be inclusive at all costs

I've been proven wrong. The evidence has overwhelmed me. I take it back.

“Stop saying ‘College isn’t for everyone,’” is one of my favorite retorts to the oft-aired argument, “Some people don’t belong in college.” It’s really a euphemism for, “Those people aren’t smart enough for college,” and is usually heard anywhere black and brown people live. But now I realize I have to rethink it, or in the very least use it in proper context. A wave of white nationalist activity on campus makes clear there are some people whom higher education shouldn’t make room for. For in making room for them, everyone suffers.

Between the election and the beginning of May, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that monitors hate groups, recorded more than 150 new reports of white nationalist fliers and recruitment materials on college campuses. But many colleges choose to downplay the spike in white supremacist activity on campus when they see it through the lens of academic freedom and free speech: It may be hateful, but it is acceptable. For many faculty members and administrators, xenophobes are just one kind of shopper in the marketplace of ideas.

But the temptation of the argument that even hate speech should be allowed in a place of learning in the name of unfettered thought is wrong-headed because white nationalism is based on a brutal and artificial hierarchy. This separatism harms higher learning. Society progresses when ideas are vulnerable to different people, fresh ways of thinking and new knowledge. Inclusion fuels the machine of higher education — the main reason I cringe every time I hear, “College isn’t for everyone.”

Join the conversation later on Andre Perry’s radio show, “Free College,” hosted Tuesdays on WBOK1230 in New Orleans at 3pm Central/4pm Eastern 504.260.9265.

Bigoted white nationalist speech isn’t just harmful to learning; the ideology of white supremacy manifests corrupted actions too. White nationalists have often resorted to violence against those who are I finally agree, college isn’t for everyone - The Hechinger Report:

TEACHER VOICE: Underpaid, my colleagues and I are frequently advised to “marry a doctor or a lawyer” - The Hechinger Report

TEACHER VOICE: Underpaid, my colleagues and I are frequently advised to “marry a doctor or a lawyer” - The Hechinger Report:

TEACHER VOICE: Underpaid, my colleagues and I are frequently advised to “marry a doctor or a lawyer”
No wonder there’s an acute teacher shortage here

TUCSON, Ariz. — Teachers work two jobs so they can buy boats and other luxury items, Arizona’s House Majority Leader Republican John Allen noted recently.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Here in Tucson, K-12 teachers get starting annual salaries in the $30,000 to $35,000 range, the same starting wage as city bus drivers, and a wage far below that of most other professions requiring a Bachelor’s Degree and professional licensing.

Arizona ranks 50^th in the United States in elementary teacher salaries adjusted for cost of living with an average salary of about $42,560 only three quarters of what teachers earn in other parts of the country.

In wages adjusted for inflation, Arizona elementary teachers are making 11 percent less now than they were in 2001. Patterns for middle and high school teachers are similar. According the 2017 Living Wage Calculator out of MIT, a family of 3 to 4 individuals necessitates a minimum annual salary of $46,000.  Teachers are taking second jobs to cover their basic living expenses, not to “enjoy the finer things in life.”

“We must remember that teaching is absolutely not charity work. It’s a calling. It’s a profession. It’s the heart of our democracy and the hope of our future.”

Given these low wages, it’s no surprise that the first bit of advice many new teachers receive is to marry a doctor or a lawyer.

Both this advice, to marry for security, and the extremely low salary offered in a field where 76 percent of teachers are female, demands attention in relation to gender-based inequities and social justice.

Because 19 percent of Arizona families have a female head of household, these low salaries contribute to a large number of children in our state living in or near poverty levels.

Why don’t we hear more of this outcry, particularly in places like Arizona where there is an acute teacher shortage and where Gov. Doug Ducey is responding to this teacher shortage signing a bill that  de-professionalize teaching, lowering standards for teacher certification.

Doesn’t he get it? The problem isn’t that people can’t meet the TEACHER VOICE: Underpaid, my colleagues and I are frequently advised to “marry a doctor or a lawyer” - The Hechinger Report: