Veteran educator Nancy Bailey knows that public schools will be confronted with the threat of deep Bridget cuts in the wake of the pandemic.
She here presents eight excellent ideas to stave off the pain of budget cuts and save public schools. Betsy DeVos offered her ideas, which are the same-old same-old stale voucher schemes. Privatization only hurts public schools, which enroll the vast majority of American children. Let’s put our money where the kids are.
Bailey explains her eight ideas.
She begins:
1. End charter schools. We can’t afford to fund two different school systems.
2. End vouchers. We already know they are unsuccessful.
3. End high-stakes testing. They waste money and produce no benefits for students.
4. End the Common Core. Ten years after this radical standardization was introduced, its proven to be ineffective.
That’s four of her eight big ideas. Open the link to read about the others.
So sensible.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We can count on Nancy Bailey to see the bigger picture. Privatization of social services is a scam. Private companies decrease efficiency despite their never ending claims that public services are inefficient. Privatization pays a few privileged people at the top more, and the actual people that do the work less, and it usually winds up costing taxpayers more for a worse service. The main objective is to move money out of public services and put it in private pockets. In addition to public education. The USPS, the VA and prisons are all under assault. Privatization undermines the working class while it benefits the interests of the already wealthy. If Trump wins a second term, many more services will continue to be privatized including Medicare and Social Security.http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/report-how-privatization-increases-inequality-2/?fbclid=IwAR0HUhVyhcTuTcAqPU3uQVpo6jP5xNUpAon9Bft_eAqzBBBqAXXJoK0UxZQ
“When Congress passed IDEA, they promised to cover 40% of the extra cost of special education. In other words, they would pay for nearly half of the additional cost required to educate students with disabilities (when compared to the cost per student without disabilities). Unfortunately, Congress has never come close to fulfilling that promise. The number of students with disabilities served under IDEA has increased by 25 percent in the past two decades. Yet, the IDEA state grant program was only funded at around $12 billion in 2017. The federal government is only covering 14.6% of the additional cost.”
Congress should make good on their promise. They aren’t holding up their end of the bargain.
https://www.ncld.org/news/policy-and-advocacy/idea-full-funding-why-should-congress-invest-in-special-education
This is sad:
“After the Stay at Home order is lifted, students at Avondale Academy may not be returning to the classroom like the rest of the district.
At Monday’s online board meeting, the Diploma and Careers Institute presented a plan to restructure the Rochester Hills high school as a full virtual alternative school.
Avondale Superintendent Dr. James Schwarz said, “Attendance issues, discipline issues, enrollment issues and financial issues are all things that have plagued the Academy. So, we’ve been charged with coming up with a solution that remediates these in a cost-effective way.”
Avondale Academy is made up of 119 students; 76 percent are minority students and 84 percent are economically disadvantaged, according to the U.S. News & World Report. As part of the plan, all students at the alternative school would be provided with their own Chromebook, and a resource center would be open Monday through Thursday, staffed with an adult mentor, for students who need in-person support. There would continue to be opportunities for breakfast and lunch, transportation and counseling for the students.”
I knew they were going to end up using “online learning” as a cheap way to educate poor and middle class kids.
For people who are supposedly so concerned with “equity” ed reformers are remarkably naive about these “innovations”. It never seems to occur to them that this garbage is not going to be “innovative” but is much more likely to be cheap junk that is palmed off on the neediest kids.
How do you get to adulthood in this country and not realize this? They really don’t know how class divisions work in the United States?
We will sees more cash strapped schools trying to shift into cyber instruction. It will be up to parents to fight for their children. If they do not cause a ruckus, some administrators may try to quietly try to make the switch without too many people being aware.
End literacy coach, math coach, and other unnecessary positions.
Stop the College Board and Gates from interfereing with the Civil Rights Data Collection which now faults schools for not offering enough AP courses and other courses identified as if essential for “college and career readiness.”