Archives for category: Support for public schools
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Columbus, Ohio: Cutting Parents Out of Public Education

By dianeravitch
July 19, 2013 //
7

A blogger in Columbus updates us on recent developments there.

First the mayor decided to get involved, which everyone thought would be a good thing.

Then the mayor appointed a panel of “experts,” many of whom do not live in Columbus and 96% of whom are not public school parents.

Then the panel released its plan: “And when the panel came out with suggestions that included eliminating the internal auditor (Carolyn Smith), installing more administration in an already bloated system, and taking in more money to support charter schools… the public response went from disappointment to outrage.”

Then the state legislature jumped in to propose that the panel recommendations go on the ballot. In Ohio these days, state intervention is usually bad news for public schools.

The question is whether the people who depend on the Columbus public schools will stand together to protect them.

Categories Charter Schools, Ohio, Parents, Support for public schools

For Shame, Mitch Daniels

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2013 //
13

An earlier post described efforts by then-Governor Mitch Daniels to make sure that Howard Zinn’s leftist history of the United States was not taught in Indiana’s public schools.

But even more alarming is his attempt to shut down Professor Chuck Little of Indiana University, a vocal critic. Little had the audacity to defend public education, which Daniels did his best to privatize.

When government officials use their awesome power to harass and silence those who dare to challenge them, democracy is in trouble.

Keep your eyes on academic freedom at Purdue. That’s where a board appointed by Mitch Daniels selected Mitch Daniels as president, despite his lack of any any academic credentials.

A colleague at Indiana University writes:

“While I appreciate that the original AP story and others like this one focus on the former governor’s desire to censor Zinn’s text, the more disturbing aspect related to public education involves Daniels’ apparent intention to target Chuck Little and the Urban Schools Association through audits and funding cuts. The Association is a non-partisan group for metropolitan school districts that advocate for the interests of urban students and teachers. To target the group would be akin to silencing advocates for poor, often minority students who have been more deeply impacted by Indiana’s education reforms than their suburban or rural counterparts. In a state where school choice programs and groups like DFER and Stand for Children are making unprecedented headway, Dr. Little and the IUSA are often the only voice before the legislature for Indiana’s urban students and schools.”

Categories Higher Education, Support for public schools

The BTA Launches New Media Today

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2013 //
25

Having sprouted nearly 20,000 members in barely two weeks, the distinguished Badass Teachers Association prepares for the long haul. Mark NAISON writes:

“Today, with the Official Launch Party for the group Logo, the youtube channel, and the opening of the BAT Store, members of the Badass Teachers Association will see how hard the administrators of this group have worked to create an organizational structure built for the long, hard, struggle to take back our profession and our schools from the profiteers, hustlers and opportunists who have marginalized our voices and deluged our schools with tests and assessments. No one should pretend this struggle will be easy, or that it will not provoke arguments in the group as to best carry it out. But I am confident that with the organization we have all created together, the national group plus the 50 state organizations, teachers now have the opportunity to speak more frankly and honestly, in collective solidarity, than they did two weeks ago. The collective courage and creativity of people on this site inspires me every day. Now let the whole nation learn what Badass Teachers can do.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/140244172840677/

Mark D Naison
Professor of African American Studies and History
Fordham University

“If you Want to Save America’s Public Schools: Replace Secretary of Education Arne Duncan With a Lifetime Educator.” http://dumpduncan.org/

Categories Privatization, Support for public schools, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Florida Teacher: Please Tell Me About Groups Fighting Back

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2013 //
24

From a reader:

“As a public school teacher in Miami, FL I would like to reach out to you and express my similar hope in developing a long-term coalition and eventual movement of teachers, parents and community to fight back against the pro-corporate anti-public education policies being pushed in FL. If someone knows of any organization or coalition that is already up and running please let me know. There are thousands of disgruntled parents, students, and teachers in schools in Miami whom I think would act and fight back alongside other across the state if there was an entity to unite us. I strongly propose we create this if it doesn’t yet exist.”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Florida, Privatization, Support for public schools

This Is a Great Organization, Good Video (Link Fixed, I Hope!)

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2013 //
8

The National Opportunity to Learn Campaign is funded largely by the Schott Foundation for Public Education.

Schott is one of the few national organizations that supports public education, not privatization.

This is a good video that it funded. Takes only a minute to watch.

Categories Support for public schools

Mark NAISON on the New BTA: Yes, You Too Can Join

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2013 //
4

Several people wrote to say that membership in the highly distinguished Badass Teachers Association was closed, that they applied and were turned down. This seemed unlikely to me, given the group’s desire to spread, so I contacted its founder Mark NAISON and asked him if there was a glitch. I also asked him if he could create a website for those who are not on Facebook. Here is his response (for some reason, whenever I write Mark’s last name on my iPad, it always turns into caps):

Hi Diane!

We now have six administrators on the site so anyone who applies gets In quickly!

As to how to create a non Facebook option for the group, I will have to discuss that with the five people who have been working with me in this, who are much higher tech then I am!

This whole explosion of interest caught me totally by surprise! I hav e started several Facebook pages and I would have never predicted tha this is the one that would go viral and capture so many people’s imaginations

Now people are talking about just showing up in Washington on Labor Day and surrounding Congress with teachers parents and students

Given what has happened in the last few days, I would not write this off as impossible!!

Best, Mark

Mark D Naison
Professor of African American Studies and History
Fordham University
“If you Want to Save America’s Public Schools: Replace Secretary of Education Arne Duncan With a Lifetime Educator.” http://dumpduncan.org/

Categories Support for public schools, Teachers and Teaching

Major Rally in Harrisburg, Pa., on June 25

By dianeravitch
June 18, 2013 //
4

A new groups called GPS (Great Public Schools) Pittsburgh plans a major rally at the state Capitol in Harrisburg to demand adequate funding for public education across the Keystone State. The state funds low-performing cyber charters and expands the number of privately managed schools that perform no better than public schools. Meanwhile the lights are going out in public schools across the state, especially in urban districts. Will Pennsylvanians unite to save public education?

Come to Harrisburg on June 25 for the beginning of the movement to stop privatization of public education in the Keystone State.

Categories Closing schools, Pennsylvania, Support for public schools

Do Low-Income Parents Want Charters or Great Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2013 //
41

Katie Osgood refers obliquely here to the famous John Dewey quote that what the best and wisest parent wants for his children is what we should want for all children:

“Here is the fundamental question: If low-income parents were offered fully-funded neighborhood schools with all kinds of “choice” offered within the schools like arts, music, sports, technology, supplemental services, libraries, world language, special education services, small classes, experienced/stable staff with low-turnover, etc (like what kids in Winnetka are offered)-would they EVER choose the charter school with inexperienced teachers, harsh discipline, long “rigorous” school days with little access to music/art, prescriptive curriculum, non-unionized/exploited and overworked staff–>high turnover? If the answer is “no” then what we need is equity, equal access to quality learning environments, and not “choice”.

“As an aside, parents in Chicago came out by the thousands to beg, plead, yell, and protest to keep their underfunded neighborhoods schools open, but the school board still voted to close 50 of those schools. We don’t even have “choice” here, we have sabotage and a privatization agenda.”

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Support for public schools

What Ralph Waldo Emerson Might Say About School Reform Today

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2013 //
46

This arrived in my email. It came from a retired school teacher in Nebraska. He said the retired teachers will not sit by and watch the capture of our public schools by corporations. The retires helped to defeat a charter bill in Nebraska.

He wrote:

Hi Diane

Just received the following letter from Ralph Waldo Emerson with a request that I send it to the good people in New England. Please help with this task.

My Dear New England Friends,

I hear that billionaires are attempting to take over our public schools. Do not let them do that. Our schools are not for sale. Here are words I used when lecturing and writing about New England’s public school gift to the United States:

“I praise New England because it is THE country in the world with the freest expenditure for education. Starting with the first planning of the colonies, New England may have been the first in the world to take an initial step for education. The initial step might have been resisted as the most radical of revolutions. New England’s step decided the start of the destiny of the United States. Here, the poor man whom the law does not allow to take an ear of corn when starving, nor a pair of shoes for his freezing feet, is allowed to put his hand into the pocket of the rich, and say, “You shall educate me, not as you will, but as I will: not alone in the elements, but by further provision, in the languages, in the sciences, and in the useful and elegant arts. The child shall be taken up by the state, and taught, at the public cost, the rudiments of knowledge, and all the results of art and science.”

My fellow New Englanders, tax the billionaires Gates and Waltons and other billionaires who want your schools. With your democratically elected school boards, educate your children in the arts and sciences. Do not let the rich limit your children’s education to specialized tasks for the purposes of the wealthy.

Best wishes from a former school master.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Categories Support for public schools

Local School Boards Are Under Siege, and So Is Democracy

By dianeravitch
June 12, 2013 //
19

David Lentini is a lawyer and school board member in Maine. I am always happy to read his informed comments. In this one, he responds to an earlier post that explained that the radical group ALEC is trying to bypass and extinguish local school boards in their pursuit of privatization.

Lentini writes:

I’ve been sounding this alarm for a long time now; it’s good to see other, more expert, commentators reaching the same conclusion.

Still, as a school board member I also fear there are many ways boards will disappear ALEC or no. Too many boards are under siege trying to balance state and federal budget cuts, increasing child and family poverty, parents and unions with unrealistic expectations, and a “school-industrial complex” that has become the province of administrators and consultants who dominate discussions with technical gobbledegook. Boards are thus left with fighting nasty, frustrating battles and having little to no direct impact on setting educational policy.

This year, my board is losing two members who have lost patience with the process. Another member who was just re-elected has openly expressed regret for returning, and I doubt I’ll run for re-election. The trend over the decades to treat education as a science (which is false), the increasing centralization at the state and federal level created by more and more funded and un-funded mandates, and the inability of the public to really confuse education with jobs-training, will, I fear, kill local control sooner than later.

To keep our local boards, we then have to acknowledge that local control has a real function in defining education that must be respected. We need to remove the noise of the politicians and “experts” who hawk faddish policies, ideas, and technologies as educational silver bullets. Most of all, we need to return to an understanding of the function education that is broader than just “getting a good job”.

Education is about creating and maintaining a culture; that’s why local control is so important. Only local boards can identify and define the issues of their communities and define educational policies to meet those issues. The question is do we want to hold on to this vision?

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Corporate Reformers, Privatization, Support for public schools
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »