Monday, March 21, 2011

NY Times on Budget Cuts: Cuomo Takes Easy Way Out, Illogically Caters to Special Interests « EdVox

NY Times on Budget Cuts: Cuomo Takes Easy Way Out, Illogically Caters to Special Interests

by edvoxny

A recent NY Times editorial from March 19th discusses Cuomo’s decisions to cater to special interests while slashing public funding for the most vulnerable.

“Gov. Andrew Cuomo has rightly argued that painful spending cuts will be needed to close New York’s projected $10 billion deficit. The hard truth is that it is impossible to cut spending deeply without cutting the state’s huge outlays for education and health care. That means that New York’s most vulnerable citizens — schoolchildren, the elderly, the poor, the sick — will feel a disproportionate amount of the pain.

Governor Cuomo has vowed to make the tough decisions and not to be swayed by

Schools Matter: "A President in a Corporate Prison Called the White House"

"A President in a Corporate Prison Called the White House"

by Jim Horn

A must watch primer below on the current political reality among "Democrats." From Raw Story:

In an extended interview with Middle East news network Al Jazeera, consumer advocate and repeat U.S. presidential candidate Ralph Nader suggested that President Barack Obama is not supporting the labor movement because “they have nowhere else to go” except for Democrats.

“If he doesn’t stand up for those millions of workers, we might as well call him a president in a corporate prison called the White House,” Nader said, likening Obama’s “playing” of labor unions to the stretching of an elastic band.

But this time, Nader said, the band may be just about ready to “snap.” Should that happen, it could kick-start a “popular revolt” in the U.S., he added.

This video is from Al Jazeera,

Daniels' War on Working Families - EXPOSED

democraticlawmakers on Mar 21, 2011

Governor Daniels and the Republicans are trying to ram a radical right-wing agenda through the Indiana legislature, making Indiana a vital front in the GOP's nationwide war on working families.

Education Week: New Urban Playbook: Hand Over Schools to Charter Operators

New Urban Playbook: Hand Over Schools to Charter Operators

Teacher Calvin Hobbs works with students at African-centered Timbuktu Academy of Science and Technology in Detroit. Timbuktu has about 350 students in kindergarten through eighth grade and is one of nine Detroit Public Schools-authorized charter schools. The school district's emergency financial manager is proposing turning the operation of 41 academically challenged schools over to charter operators to help cut into a $327 million legacy budget deficit.

—AP

By Mary Ann Zehr

Premium article access courtesy of Edweek.org.

New Northshore Parent Group Seeks Voice in Collective Bargaining With Teachers - Woodinville, WA Patch

New Northshore Parent Group Seeks Voice in Collective Bargaining With Teachers

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Union says it’s not opposed to talking, but wonders who the new group is.

By Annie Archer | Email the author | 5:00am

A small core group of parents calling themselvesNorthshore Families for Better Schools is trying to gain an equal voice in Northshore School District’s collective bargaining negotiations with the Northshore chapter of the Washington State Education Association (NSEA). While the group states that all it wants is more parental involvement with the district and teacher evaluations, the union questions the motives of the group and its membership.

The parent group, aligned with the League of Education Voters, started a little more than a month ago with six

Save a teacher's salary... repeal 'No Child Left Behind Southern Political Report

Southern Political Report

Save a teacher's salary... repeal 'No Child Left Behind'

By John A. Tures
Associate Professor of Political Science
LaGrange College

March 21, 2011 —

The Wisconsin battle over unions has opened up a national debate about whether or not teacher salaries are breaking budgets. Are teachers being paid too much? If not, how can we keep from cutting their salaries or laying them off in these tight budget times?

Nicholas D. Kristof wrote a column for the New York Times in which he claims that “a basic educational challenge is not that teachers are raking it in, but that they are underpaid. If we want to compete with other countries, and chip away at poverty across America, then we need to pay teachers more so as to attract better people into the profession.” South Korea and Singapore reward teachers, with good student results, he finds.

For additional evidence, he cites the McKinsey & Co. report “Closing the Talent Gap” which concludes, “In 1970, in New York City, a newly minted teacher at a public school earned about $2,000 less in salary than a starting lawyer at a prominent law firm. These days the lawyer takes home, including bonus, $115,000 more than the teacher, the McKinsey study found.”

I decided to see for myself whether teachers receive better pay, on average. So I examined research that compares the average teacher salary in a state to that state’s median household income . Only in DC do teachers earn $10,000 more than the median household income. Only 15 states have teachers earn more than the median household income.

Remembering Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Torlakson Calls for Education Reform, Discusses New Initiatives - San Lorenzo, CA Patch

Torlakson Calls for Education Reform, Discusses New Initiatives

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State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson previewed a series of new campaigns to improve California education at a CSU East Bay mixer last week.

By Zoneil Maharaj | Email the author | 12:20pm

Tom Torlakson is an optimist.

Despite the pressures on California’s education system, the new state Superintendent of Public Instruction is planning a renaissance.

Last week, Torlakson joined representatives of the Bay Area’s education, government and business sectors at California State University East Bay for a mixer-turned-discussion about the state’s education policies and practices.

The event, sponsored by the superintendent’s Transition Committee, East Bay Economic Development Alliance and CSU East Bay, is part of a series that Torlakson has held since he was sworn in as California’s 27th state Superintendent of Public

SACRAMENTO PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE: Debt, Austerity, and How to Fight Back

Debt, Austerity, and How to Fight Back

By Frances Fox Piven and Cornel West
The Nation
March 17, 2011

http://www.thenation.com/article/159309/debt-austerity-and-how-fight-back

Editor's note: On Tuesday, April 5, hundreds of schools
and community groups will participate in a teach-in on
debt, austerity and how people are fighting back. From
2-3:30 pm (EST) a national teach-in will be streamed
live from New York City, followed by local teach-ins
and strategy discussions around the country. Read the
call to action by Frances Fox Piven and Cornel West,
check out the organizing guide and join the movement by
attending or hosting a teach-in near you. Please see
http://www.fightbackteachin.org for more information.

Republicans planning a coup - South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com #wiunion

Republicans planning a coup - South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

GOP coup: Party planning union-busting all over

Stephen Goldstein
Bio | E-mail | Recent columns

Stephen GoldsteinColumnist

March 20, 2011

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We are all Wisconsinites! It's coup-time across America — and especially in Florida. November 2010 wasn't just any election. In addition to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Republican governors with all-Republican state legislatures now have unprecedented power radically to alter the nation. They have met and plotted; they speak and act from the same script. This is not conspiracy theory; it is documentable collusion.

Publicly, Republicans are crying "the economy blues," as though they cared about average Americans. But that's just a ruse to divert attention from their real agenda, which is an elitist power-grab: defeating Obama in 2012, completing the total corporate takeover of the nation and disenfranchising average Americans. It has less to do with creating jobs than with ensuring sky-high, corporate profits — and putting the Democratic Party permanently out of work.

Wisconsin State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald confessed the underlying purpose behind his state's anti-union battle: "If we win ... and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions ... President Obama is going to have a ... much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of

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