Public schools

How Vouchers Harm Public Schools

January 2, 2025 Hilary Wething, Economic Policy Institute. Educate! Education, Privatization, Public schools, Report, School Vouchers

Voucher programs for schools are rapidly expanding across the country. Under these programs, public budgets provide funding to parents to either send their children to private school or homeschool them. These programs’ growing popularity raises the question of whether letting public money leave the public school system and subsidize private forms of schooling is a way to improve children’s access to an excellent education. EPI’s analysis shows that vouchers harm public schools. To illustrate the damage, EPI has developed a tool that estimates fiscal externalities—the dollar costs to school districts from students leaving public schools with a voucher.

Teachers Turn To Study Groups For Anti-Racist Learning

December 31, 2024 Jesse Hagopian and Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, Truthout. Organize! Anti-Racism, Education, History, Public schools

It is hard to overstate the burdens public school educators have been asked to carry over the last several years. There are the perennial stressors: inadequate funding, crumbling infrastructure, the inundation of schools with standardized testing, and too little time to plan, grade and collaborate with colleagues. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic: isolation, building closures, remote teaching, reopenings and severe staff shortages. Wielding the cudgel of “learning loss,” elites laid the blame for the traumatic impacts of a pandemic at the feet of teachers and public schools.

Schools Are No Place For The ADL

December 24, 2024 Marcy Winograd, Counter Punch. Educate! ADL, Palestine, Public schools, Zionism

Launched in 1913 to counter antisemitism and discrimination, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) now resembles a mythological shapeshifter that presents alternately as a civil rights organization and a pro-Israel propagandist. In its “No Place for Hate” program that caters to both elementary and secondary schools, the ADL’s stated mission is to empower students, teachers and parents to “stand against bias and bullying …” with school-wide pledges, projects and games aimed at celebrating diversity and stamping out hate in the halls, in the cafeteria, in the reading circle, anywhere that hate may manifest.

What Can Education Can Look Like Without High Stakes Testing?

December 22, 2024 Doug Selwyn, Greenfield Recorder Create! Education, Public schools, Teachers, Testing

Ballot Question 2 passed with more than 59% of the vote, ending the MCAS as a graduation requirement in Massachusetts. Students will still take the MCAS, beginning in grade 3 up through high school, and they will still be required to pass their high school classes that are aligned with the state standards, so public education will not devolve into chaos as the opponents warned in their scare ads. There will still be a focus on serving all children in all of our classrooms, children will still be assessed through multiple measures, and there is hope that freedom from the one-size-fits-all straight jacket that is a high-stakes testing regime will allow teachers to more fully respond to the diverse learners in their classrooms.

Seattle Planned To Close Up To 21 Public Schools; Here’s How We Stopped Them

December 19, 2024 Jesse Hagopian, Truthout. Organize! Education, Public schools, School closures, Seattle, Victory

From coast to coast, school districts are proposing closures, as pandemic-era funds have long since dried up and gentrification has driven families out of increasingly unaffordable neighborhoods. Yet in a time when budget cuts threaten public education nationwide, Seattle organizers have shown that communities can fight back — and win. After initially proposing in spring to close up to 21 schools — and, under immense pressure, reducing that number to four — Seattle Public Schools (SPS) announced in late November that it was canceling all plans to close schools.

The Unequal Effects Of School Closings

August 26, 2024 Alec MacGillis, Pro Publica. Educate! Education, Public schools, Special Needs Students, Systemic Racism

In the 1990s, when Liberia descended into civil war, the Kpor family fled to Ivory Coast. A few years later, in 1999, they were approved for resettlement in the United States and ended up in Rochester, New York. Janice Kpor, who was 11 at the time, jokingly wonders whether her elders were under the impression that they were moving to New York City. What she remembers most about their arrival is the trees: It was May, yet many were only just starting to bud. “It was, like, ‘Where are we?’” she said. “It was completely different.” But the Kpors adapted and flourished. Janice lived with her father in an affordable-housing complex close to other family members, and she attended the city’s public schools before enrolling in St. John Fisher University, just outside the city, where she got a bachelor’s degree in sociology and African American studies.

NYC Public Schools Chancellor Suppresses Palestinian Voices

July 8, 2024 Mohammad Jehad Ahmad, Mondoweiss. Resist! Censorship, Education, Israel, New York City (NYC), Palestine, Public schools

Since long before “Israel’s” October 2023 escalation of the genocide against Palestinians, the New York City Public Schools (NYCPS) has both systemically erased and marginalized Palestinian narratives. This suppression comes from the top, most recently with NYCPS Chancellor David Banks’ Zionist internal communications and decision-making. Since October, Banks has taken every opportunity to reaffirm his commitment to continue his anti-intellectual conflation of Zionism and Judaism. He held press conferences and expressed support for unharmed and unvictimized Zionist students and staff who breached contracts and engaged in disruptive political actions on and off school grounds.

As Brown Vs Board Of Education Turns 70, Fight Against Segregation Not Over

May 27, 2024 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast - Clearing The FOG Charter Schools, Education, Public schools, School Vouchers, Systemic Racism

In 1954, the landmark decision by the Supreme Court, Brown versus the Board of Education, established that the segregation of students based on race was no longer legal. Seventy years later, schools remain highly segregated and the education system is becoming more unequal. Clearing the FOG speaks with Jennifer Berkshire, a licensed school teacher, journalist and author of the new book, "The Education War: A Citizen's Guide and Defense Manual," about the forces behind the defunding and privatization of education in the United States. Berkshire describes nontraditional coalitions that are forming at the state level to stop voucher programs. Some are having success. She also explains how rightwing ideology has infected Democrats and liberals in this struggle.

Missing Links In Textbook History: Opposition To War

May 27, 2024 Jim Mamer, Scheer Post. Educate! Anti-War, Curriculum, Education, History, Public schools, Wars and Militarism

The inescapable fact is that war has dominated much of U.S. history. According to Freakonometrics–statistician Arthur Charpentier, the United States has been at war 93% of the years since 1776. Nevertheless, as I have noted elsewhere, most of those wars are ignored by both textbooks and media. Informed by experience as a teacher, I’m convinced that students need to study at least the most significant American wars. They need to study why and how those wars were fought, the debates that occurred at the time and why some supported war while others opposed it. Unfortunately, when a war is included in history textbooks or discussed in classes, opposition to that war is generally ignored or misrepresented.

70 Years After Brown, Too Many US Schools Remain Hypersegregated

May 26, 2024 Shannon Paige Clark, Scheer Post. Educate! Education, Public schools, Segregation, Systemic Racism

I was 21 when I started teaching at Hope-Hill Elementary School in Atlanta. I had big dreams and bold ideas — some held, others fettered as the toll of teaching in majority Black schools suffering from resource deprivation took hold. My first year was complicated by the fact that C.W. Hill Elementary closed, or merged with John Hope Elementary, depending on whom you ask. And in an effort to make the devastating change more palatable, John Hope Elementary School became Hope-Hill Elementary School. This was my introduction to austerity measures, or the practices in school districts that justified slashing resources, slimming budgets, and closing schools, which are often in working-class Black communities.

70 Years After Brown Vs. Board Of Ed, Public Schools Still Deeply Segregated

January 6, 2024 Erica Frankenberg, Scheer Post. Educate! Black America, Brown v. Board of Education, Education, History, Public schools, Segregation

Brown vs. Board of Education, the pivotal Supreme Court decision that made school segregation unconstitutional, turns 70 years old on May 17, 2024. At the time of the 1954 ruling, 17 U.S. states had laws permitting or requiring racially segregated schools. The Brown decision declared that segregation in public schools was “inherently unequal.” This was, in part, because the court argued that access to equitable, nonsegregated education played a critical role in creating informed citizens – a paramount concern for the political establishment amid the Cold War. With Brown, the justices overturned decades of legal precedent that kept Black Americans in separate and unequal schools.

Conservatives Want To Destroy Public Schools

December 16, 2023 Jennifer Berkshire, In These Times. Organize! Censorship, Conservatives, Education, Public schools

Tulsa, Oklahoma — Ashley Daly still gets angry thinking about the first Oklahoma state board of education meeting she attended. It was August 2022 and the board was preparing to downgrade the accreditation for two school districts, including Tulsa, where Daly’s daughter attends school, over alleged violations of Oklahoma’s new law banning critical race theory. As the board penalized the district for a diversity training that predated the law, the realization struck her: “They were punishing a school district of 33,000 kids for political reasons, and I was the only parent from Tulsa in the room.”

Indian Country’s Forever Chemical Problem

August 17, 2023 Zoya Teirstein, Native News Online. Organize! Environment, health, Indigenous Rights, PFAS, Public schools

Laurie Harper, director of education for the Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School, a K-12 tribal school on the Leech Lake Band Indian Reservation in north-central Minnesota, never thought that a class of chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, would be an issue for her community. That’s partly because, up until a few months ago, she didn’t even know what PFAS were. “We’re in the middle of the Chippewa National Forest,” she said. “It’s definitely not something I had really clearly considered dealing with out here.” Late last year, tests conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency revealed that her school’s drinking water wells were contaminated with PFAS.

50 Years Older And Deeper In Debt

August 3, 2023 Stan Karp, Rethinking Schools. Educate! Budgets, Education, Public schools, Supreme Court

This year marks the 50th anniversary of San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, the landmark 5-4 Supreme Court decision that held that education is not a fundamental right protected by the U.S. Constitution. The decision dashed hopes that the historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling that ended legal segregation in 1954 would be followed by a sustained federal commitment to making education equality a reality. Demetrio Rodriguez was a sheet metal worker and a member of the Edgewood Concerned Parent Association when he became the lead plaintiff in the case. He thought his three children were being shortchanged by wide disparities in schooling across the sprawling San Antonio school district and the state of Texas.

Largest School District In Texas Eliminates Libraries

July 29, 2023 Kylie Cheung, Jezebel. Educate! Education, Libraries, Public schools, Texas

The largest public school district in the state of Texas is converting libraries in 28 schools into disciplinary centers and eliminating school librarian positions, local news outlets reported on Thursday. The alarming change comes as part of a sweeping reform program led by the Houston Independent School District’s (HISD) new superintendent Mike Miles, who oversees 85 schools. Of the remaining 57 schools with libraries, the district said each will be assessed on a case-by-case basis, indicating more libraries could be closed. Under Miles’ New Education System (NES) program, libraries in the 28 schools will become “Team Centers,” where “kids with behavioral issues will be sent,” per the Houston-based NBC affiliate, KRPC.

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