We will miss you Maya Angelou | Cloaking Inequity

We will miss you Maya Angelou | Cloaking Inequity:

We will miss you Maya Angelou

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. I’ll probably be writing when the Lord says, ‘Maya, Maya Angelou, it’s time.’

It is with a sad heart that I learn today of the passing of Maya Angelou. Here are a few select Maya Angelou quotes:

My task for today…

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

A lesson for faculty…

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

The pursuit of knowledge…

Nothing will work unless you do.

Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.

Will you say and do what needs to be done to protect public education…

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

All of us knows, not what is expedient, not what is going to make us popular, not what the policy is, or the company policy – but in truth each of us knows what is the right thing to do. And that’s how I am guided.

Diversity…

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

School segregation…

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.

Until blacks and whites see each other as brother and sister, we will not have parity. It’s very clear.

In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.

Schools without libraries and literacy…

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery.

Social studies standards…

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‘I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.

Watch her story about meeting and mentoring Tupac (“six pack”).

and finally..

I work very hard, and I play very hard. I’m grateful for life. And I live it – I believe life loves the liver of it. I live it.

I love a Hebrew National hot dog with an ice-cold Corona – no lime. If the phone rings, I won’t answer until I’m done.

We will see you again soon Maya.

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!

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LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 5-28-14 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all:

Breaking News: Florida League of Women Voters Releases Bombshell Charter Study

The Florida League of Women Voters just released a bombshell study of charters across the state. The study shows that charter schools do not perform better than public schools; that charters are more segregated than public schools; that many charters funnel money to religious organizations; that a significant number of charters operate for profit; and that the charter industry has captured control

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Beardsley Reviews Huffman’s Claims About Tennessee

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Heilig: A Tribute to Maya Angelou

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A Hero in Los Angeles: Stuart Magruder

When I first learned that Superintendent John Deasy planned to spend as much as $1billion to equip everyone in theLos Angeles school district with iPads for Common Core testing, I was amazed that the district could afford such a large expenditure. Then I learned from reading Howard Blume in the Los Angeles Times that TE district would pay for the iPads from a 25-year construction bond fund approve

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Help Sponsor Researchers to Study Failure of Vouchers in Chile

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Thankful for John Ewing

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Jon Pelto Exploratory Committee for Governor of Connecticut Is Open

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LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 5-27-14 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

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5-28-14 Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher

Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.:

Carole L. Perlman. Using test scores to evaluate teachers creates problems.

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And still we rise.

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One big union.

  What would have been the impact of the Chicago Teachers Union and its dynamic militant leadership on a single teacher union the state? In 1998 at the National Education Association Representative Assembly in New Orleans nearly sixty percent of the delegates voted to oppose the leadership’s merger proposal – a proposal that would have united the nation’s two teacher unions: the NEA and the Ameri

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5-27-14 Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher

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Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: We need a living wage in Chicago

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: We need a living wage in Chicago:

We need a living wage in Chicago

R.I.P. Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less. -- Note to self

 LIVING WAGE...While Rahm's appointed minimum-wage committee continues to "study" the issue, a group of progressive aldermen are submitting an ordinance to the City Council today, to raise the minimum wage in Chicago to $15-an-hour. Rahm wants to study the possibility of raising it to $10. I would argue that we need a living wage bill nationwide.

"I think it's time for us to present a real ordinance," said Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th) Tuesday, adding that members of the Progressive Reform Caucus will be submitting the ordinance at Wednesday's City Council meeting.

Watch Rahm, Burke and the boys shoot it down. But thanks for trying, aldermen.

TRAFFICKING IN TEACHERS...Don't miss the latest horror story by George Joseph, in In These Times, about the trafficking of Filipino teachers into Houston (Rahm's model Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: We need a living wage in Chicago:

5-28-14 Wait What? Pelto 2014 Exploratory Committee is up and running!

Wait What?:

Pelto 2014 Exploratory Committee is up and running!

Pelto 2014 Exploratory Committee is up and running!

May 28, 2014 Friends, I want to thank all the people who have stepped forward with words of support and encouragement as I explore whether to run for governor in 2014 Your continued help is the vital building block in this developing effort. First, we hope to have the petitioning forms available by next Monday. […] The post Pelto 2014 Exploratory Committee is up and running! appeared first on Wait

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5-27-14 Wait What? Former state Rep. Jonathan Pelto explores third-party run for governor

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The Answer Sheet 5-28-14

Answer Sheet:

When Maya Angelou blasted Obama’s school-reform policies

The legendary poet and author Maya Angelou, who just passed away at the age of  86, was a big supporter of President Obama, and in 2011, he awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. But she also was a critic of his school-reform policies, raising her voice last year to blast […]

19 by Valerie Strauss / 19min hide  //  save

WiFi in U.S. schools estimated cost: $4 billion to meet Obama’s goal

President Obama’s vision of ensuring that 99 percent of American K-12 schools have broadband and WIFI by 2018 is going to be mighty expensive. The Federal Communications Commission received an estimate Wednesday of how much money it will take: $800 million a year for five years for a total $4 billion.  The estimate came from […]

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Jim Carrey gives commencement speech at Maharishi University of Management

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YESTERDAY

Send in questions, comments for live online education chat at 1 p.m. Wednesday

I’ll be doing a live online education chat on washingtonpost.com at 1 p.m. Wednesday, May 28. Please submit questions, comments, concerns, suggestions, jokes or whatever here, and tune in then or read the transcript later. Here are transcripts of some of my previous online chats: here, here, here, and here.

2 by Valerie Strauss / 8h 

The Answer Sheet 5-27-14

Answer Sheet: Is Boston’s school district eliminating history department as part of Common Core?The Boston public schools district found itself in the position of having to issue a public statement denying that it was eliminating its history and social studies department after someone posted on the Web that it was and the news went viral in the education world. Historians assumed it was true and r

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