Public Education

Hostile Takeover Of Houston School District By Texas Education Agency

March 22, 2023 The Network for Public Education. Resist! Democracy, Privatization, Public Education, Texas

The Network for Public Education strongly objects to the takeover of the Houston Independent Public School District (HISD) by the Texas Education Agency (TEA). We believe this is a cynical political move to disenfranchise the residents of Houston by yanking control of the governance of their schools from their elected board and giving governing power to political appointees. Network for Public Education Executive Director Carol Burris states, “This decision is clearly a calculated move to put Houston schools under the Governor’s thumb. In the past few years, the elected Board, Superintendent, educators, and students of HISD have made great strides in school improvement.

Changes To AP African American Studies Are ‘Absolutely Political’

February 5, 2023 Jess Dubois, Left Voice. Educate! African Studies, Censorship, Public Education

Last Wednesday, the College Board announced new changes to its AP African American Studies curriculum, soon after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis banned AP African American Studies from Florida schools as part of his crackdown on any curriculum acknowledging systemic racism or discussing queer issues in a positive light. Sure enough, the new curricular changes remove several of the more left-wing authors and ideas, relegate contemporary topics like Black Lives Matter, reparations, Black feminism, and the Black queer experience to “optional” or “suggested” status, and add “Black conservatism” as a suggested topic for projects. The president of the College Board, David Coleman, told The New York Times that these changes were all pedagogical, not political. But as a former College Board employee myself, I have a pretty good guess what these “pedagogical” reasons are.

Students Lead US Push For Fuller Black History Education

April 9, 2021 Mike Catalini, AP News. Create! Black History, Public Education, Public schools, Youth Activism

Trenton, NJ - Ebele Azikiwe was in the sixth grade last year when February came and it was time to learn about Black history again. She was, by then, familiar with the curriculum: Rosa Parks, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and a discussion on slavery. Just like the year before, she said, and the year before that. Then came George Floyd’s death in May, and she wrote to the administration at her school in Cherry Hill, in New Jersey’s Philadelphia suburbs, to ask for more than the same lessons. “We learned about slavery, but did we go into the roots of slavery?” Ebele, 12, said in an interview. “You learned about how they had to sail across, but did you learn about how they felt being tied down on those boats?”

Charter Schools Invaded Our Neighborhoods Without Public Input

February 21, 2021 Carl J. Petersen, Medium. Educate! California, Charter Schools, Privatization, Public Education

East Los Angeles is a community rich in culture and a strong history of activism. Our youth led the student walkouts in the ’60s fought against the Vietnam war during the Chicano Moratorium and have since filled the streets protesting the racist policies by the Trump administration. Still, we have been vastly left behind by our local, state, and federal leaders. Policies to protect our local environment, improve access to health care and make sure that our children are well educated have been inadequate. Charter schools swooped in claiming they could fill this void, but their promises were empty. Their presence brought discord, scandals, left our public education even more underfunded, and did not outperform our local schools.

Large Numbers Of People Still Filing For Unemployment Each Week

November 15, 2020 Jacob Crosse, WSWS. Educate! COVID-19, Public Education, Recession, Unemployment

For the 34th straight week, over 700,000 people filed for unemployment in the US according to the Department of Labor’s latest report. The 709,000 state claims coupled with an additional 298,154 initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance brings the weekly total once again to over 1 million new claims. Nearly 67 million claims have been filed since mid-March as the worst economic crisis to befall the working class in the United States since the Great Depression of the 1930s leaves millions on the brink of destitution.

Bad Leadership Is Plunging Public Schools Into A Crisis

November 3, 2020 Jeff Bryant, The Progressive. Educate! COVID-19, Public Education, School reopening, Teachers

Michael Barbour, a professor at Touro University California and an expert on K-12 online learning, believes that more than half of the nation’s school superintendents “should be fired.” His blistering criticism stems from the fact that, deep into the 2020-2021 school year, many schools are still struggling with virtual learning during the pandemic. Stories of school districts’ online learning systems crashing are widespread. Teachers complain about not being included in decisions about online curriculum and pedagogy. Alarming numbers of students are not engaged or not showing up, especially in low-income areas and among communities of color.

Group That Won School-Funding Suit Now Challenging Private School Vouchers

May 15, 2020 Darrel Rowland, Columbus Dispatch. Resist! Legal System, Ohio, Privatization, Public Education

The same coalition that successfully sued the state a generation ago over an unconstitutional school-funding system now is putting together a new lawsuit challenging the legality of Ohio’s school voucher program. “The vouchers are causing harm to the students that are left in the public school districts, reducing the availability of resources that school districts have,” said Bill Phillis, executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding. “And, of course, there’s a double whammy now with the reduction of appropriations for primary and secondary education,” he added, noting $300 million in K-12 funding cuts announced last week stemming from reduced state revenue due to the coronavirus pandemic. Ohio’s EdChoice voucher program redirects taxpayer money from public schools and gives it to parents to help them pay tuition to private schools.

DeVos And Charter School Movement Use Pandemic To Advance Agenda

April 28, 2020 Jeff Bryant, Inequality.org. Educate! Charter Schools, Pandemic, Privatization, Public Education

COVID-19 has shuttered public schools across the nation, state governments are threatening to slash education budgets due to the economic collapse caused by the outbreak, and emergency aid provided by the federal government is far short of what is needed, according to a broad coalition of education groups. But the charter school industry may benefit from its unique status to seek public funding from multiple sources and expand these schools into many more communities traumatized by the pandemic and financial fallout. As school districts reported problems converting classroom learning into online instruction delivered to students’ homes, often due to lack of funding for internet-capable devices and Wi-Fi hotspots, charter school proponents are jumping in to take advantage of emergency aid.

On Contact: The End Of Public Education

April 21, 2020 Chris Hedges, RT. Resistance Report Cyber Charter School, Privatization, Public Education, Racism

Chris Hedges talks to Cornell University Professor Noliwe Rooks about how America’s public education system, under successive administrations, continues to be segregated along racial lines, and what is taught is often shaped by business goals and ideas. With the rise of charter schools, a cover for privatization, steering public money towards corporate profits, the most disturbing trends are cyber charter schools where children only have to check-in with teachers three times a week, term papers outsourced and graded in India, and the advent of cyber classes for pre-K children. Rooks’ book, now in paperback, is entitled ‘Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation and the End of Public Education’.

Charter School Promoters Terrified Of Growing Opposition To Their Full-Frontal Assault On Public Education

March 11, 2019 Shawgi Tell, Dissidentvoice.org Educate! Charter Schools, Education, Public Education

The ongoing widely-supported teachers’ strikes across the United States are bringing to the fore many problems that have been confronting public education for decades, including a big and overdue focus on the havoc and destruction caused by charter schools against public schools and the public interest for the last 28 years. Teacher strikes everywhere are smashing the silence on charter schools and awakening many out of their charter school stupor. Even the most anti-conscious individual is slowly beginning to see the disaster that charter schools and the neoliberal antisocial offensive are producing. Criticism and rejection of charter schools is becoming more mainstream with each passing month.

Is Wall Street About To Take Over Public Education?

July 10, 2017 Emily Talmage, www.emilytalmage.com Educate! Public Education, Wall Street

By Emily Talmage for Save Maine Schools - Across the country, teachers are being asked to collect, record, and slog through mountains of data that “experts” insist is meant to improve their practice. There are pre-assessments and post-assessments, habits of work rubrics, writing prompts, social and emotional screeners, standards-based grading systems, RTI data, student learning objectives, professional growth goals, student surveys, self evaluations, administrator evaluations, office discipline referrals, results from progress monitoring programs …the data demands go on and on, and all of it must be entered and stored in learning management systems. Recently, a few brave teachers have begun to publicly state the obvious: that we don’t need all of this data to do our jobs well. Unfortunately, no one seems to be listening, as there is a far more powerful entity that does need all this data: Wall Street. As Pay for Success schemes – also known as Social Impact Bonds – sweep the country, data collection in schools is reaching new heights. “[It’s] an approach that has come of age,” Andy Sieg, Managing Director and Head of Global Wealth and Retirement Solutions at Bank of America Merrill Lynch said of Pay for Success contracts.

Support Education Activist Sarah Chambers

April 16, 2017 Michelle Strater Gunderson, livingindialogue.com Resist! Chicago Teachers Union, Public Education, Teachers, Worker Rights

By Michelle Strater Gunderson for Living in Dialogue. Chicago, IL - If you are fortunate, every once in a while you will meet someone who breathes the fire of justice. In my life Sarah Chambers, a special education teacher from Maria Saucedo School in Chicago, fills that role. Yet, this is the teacher who the Chicago Public Schools suspended last week pending a hearing that could lead to her firing. Sarah is everywhere in Chicago when there is a call to defend children with disabilities. She is the leader of the Chicago Teachers Union Special Education Task Force, the co-chair of the Caucus of Rank and File Educators, a member of the union’s executive board, and a negotiator on our latest bargaining team. So, why would the Chicago Public Schools send her a letter the night before our Spring Break removing her from the classroom?

Trump’s Budget Slashes Funding For Public Schools

March 18, 2017 Carol Burris, www.networkforpubliceducation.org Educate! Budgets, Donald Trump, Education, Privatization, Public Education

By Carol Burris for The Network for Public Good - Donald Trump’s education budget is a declaration of war on public education and our nation’s neediest children. It was surely designed by Betsy DeVos. Trump’s budget would axe after-school programs known as the 21st Century Community Learning Centers which help school districts, churches and nonprofit groups serve more than 1.6 million American children, most of whom are poor. In defending the cuts to such programs, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said after-school programs don’t “show results.” He went on to say that feeding children after-school has never been proven to get them better jobs, so we cannot afford to do it anymore

The Long Game: Where Art Thou Public Education?

February 19, 2017 Morna McDermott, www.educationalchemy.com Create! Education, Education reform, Public Education

By Morna McDermott for Education Alchemy. The privatizers are busy at work. Unless you live under a rock (a tempting thought lately…) you probably feel like I do every time you turn on the news; the sensation of riding the Tilt a Whirl while taking ‘shrooms. It’s exhausting at best, and terrifying at worst; trying to untangle what is happening around us. Take Devos and her anti-Grizzly platform as the prime example of current insanity.We're all made here The most recent effort toward destroying public ed comes in the form of the Choices in Education Act of 2017. I live in Maryland along with Andy Harris (R) who is co-sponsor of this bill. (lucky me). Many activists fighting against education reform are already on top of pushing back and calling for action against this bill, as well they (and we) should be. Like many of my friends and colleagues I am also strongly opposed to a voucher system for school funding and this bill.

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