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Thursday, January 30, 2014

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: An American Child's Bill of Rights

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: An American Child's Bill of Rights:



An American Child's Bill of Rights

James Meredith confronted by hostile, racist mob as he tries to enter the Univ. of Mississippi in 1962.
Billions of dollars now spent on standardized testing and “so-called education reforms” can be better spent to help children. -- James Meredith
I'm always taken aback when corporate-style school "reformers", from Ed Sec. Duncan to voucher proponents and even school re-segregationists, claim they are all acting in the name of "civil rights".

I was even grateful when Teach For America (TFA) leader Stevona Elem Rogers stated frankly, back in March, that, "as an organization we are a lot of things for better or worse, but a 'Civil Rights Movement' is not one of them."

Now, a bona fide civil rights hero, James Meredith has once again come out swinging, calling modern school reform “catastrophically misguided and ineffective,” and launching what he calls the American Child’s Education Bill of Rights.

Valerie Strauss writes in yesterday's Washington Post:

Meredith, who now drives his grandchildren to public school in Jackson, Miss., every day said:
“We are losing millions of our children to inferior schools and catastrophically