Public schools

Governor Signs Law To Stop Teachers From Talking About Racism

June 25, 2021 Jennifer Bendery, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Education, Public schools, Racism, Texas

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday signed one of his party’s top legislative priorities into law: a bill aimed at stopping teachers from talking about racism and any current events that may be contentious. The legislation, supported by virtually every GOP state legislator, states that social studies teachers in public K-12 schools “may not be compelled” to talk about current events or public policy or social issues considered controversial. If they do talk about such things, they are required to present the issue “without giving deference to any one perspective.” The law specifies all the things that social studies teachers aren’t allowed to talk about. They can’t make it part of a course to talk about the concept that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex.”

What’s Up With The Sudden Attacks On Schools That Teach Critical Race Theory?

June 4, 2021 Jeff Bryant, LA Progressive. Educate! Critical Race Theory, Education, Public schools, Racism

When North Carolina public school teacher Justin Parmenter penned an opinion piece for the Charlotte Observer about the difficulties of teaching in hybrid mode during the pandemic, with students both in-person in the classroom and remote online, he didn’t expect to get called out by a legislator on the floor of the state House of Representatives.

Financialization Created Chicago Public Schools’ Fiscal Crisis

May 6, 2021 Stephanie Farmer, Jacobin Magazine. Educate! Chicago, Debt, Public schools, Wall Street

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is in a deep and enduring fiscal crisis. After decades of budget cuts, Chicago’s public K–12 schools have been hollowed out, magnifying the hardships of stagnant wages, rising housing prices, and more faced by the city’s working class. Pundits have predictably blamed CPS’s fiscal crisis on either the greedy teachers’ union (Republicans’ and a few austerity-minded Democrats’ scapegoat) or on conservative suburban and rural “downstate” politicians in Illinois hostile to urban children’s plight (most Democrats’ scapegoat). But Chicago is a one-party city, controlled by the Democrats, in a solidly blue state, where Democrats usually control the state government.

The Country Moves Forward, Education Falls Back

April 16, 2021 Gayle Greene, Counterpunch. Educate! Department of Education, Education, Public schools, Testing

There’s hope in the air, a scent of spring, anticipation of change, democracy may pull through. Why, then, with K-12 public schools, the broken promise, the dismay? Biden raised hopes when he promised, Dec 16, 2019, that he’d “commit to ending the use of standardized testing in public schools,” saying (rightly) that “teaching to a test underestimates and discounts the things that are most important for students to know.” Yet on Feb 22, his Department of Education did an about-face, announcing, “we need to understand the impact COVID-19 has had on learning …parents need information on how their children are doing.” How the children are doing? They’re struggling, that’s how, doing their best, and so are teachers and parents.

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?”

New Massachusetts Law Paves Way For Police-Free Schools

February 17, 2021 Rachel M. Cohen, The Appeal. Create! Massachusetts, Police, Police in Schools, Public schools

In Massachusetts, those who want police out of public schools are one step closer to making it happen. Lawmakers recently struck down a requirement that all school districts in the state have at least one “school resource officer”—a moniker for school cops. Now just two states—Florida and Maryland—have laws requiring police in schools, and advocates are pushing them to follow suit. Massachusetts adopted the school police requirement in 2014 in response to the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in Connecticut where 26 people were killed at school, including 20 young children. Since then, the number of cops assigned to work in Massachusetts schools has steadily grown, as school shootings nationwide have continued.

California Must Lead The Way In Abolishing School And University Campus Police

February 2, 2021 Angela Davis, Melina Abdullah and Robin D. G. Kelley, Sacramento Bee. Resist! California, Campus Police, Police, Public schools

The first days of 2021 — which will surely be remembered for police officers in Washington, D.C. removing barricades in order for white supremacists to storm the United States Capitol, confederate flag in hand — ask us to continue learning from the unprecedented uprisings of 2020, in which hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest anti-Black police violence. The 2020 uprisings articulated transformative visions of a world without anti-Black violence, a world without hyper-funded police forces and thus a world with deep community safety and care. In response to this sweeping vision, some of our employers within California’s public university systems have deemed calls for the removal of police from campuses a “non-starter.”

Defying CPS, Some Chicago Teachers Union Members Won’t Return To Schools

January 5, 2021 Diana Wallace and Morgan Greene, Chicago Tribune. Resist! Chicago, COVID-19, Public schools, School reopening

The Chicago Teachers Union says some of its members are choosing not to return to school buildings on Monday, in defiance of Chicago Public Schools’ reopening plans. The union said Sunday it is “rejecting CPS’ effort to force thousands more back into unsafe buildings beginning this Monday” and that teachers intend to continue providing their lessons remotely “until buildings are safe” for them and for students. Additionally, more than 30 aldermen signed on to a letter sent Sunday to Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson, saying they were “deeply concerned” that the reopening plan does not meet the district’s equity objectives and fails to address some safety concerns.

Betsy DeVos’s ‘Voucherland’ Spells Disaster For Public Schools

November 17, 2020 Peter Greene, The Progressive. Educate! Education, Privatization, Public schools, Vouchers

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, sensing perhaps the need to reaffirm her stamp on education policy, recently gave a speech at an education roundtable at Hillsdale College, a private Christian college in Michigan. The Washington Post called her remarks an “anti-government polemic” that reasserted one of her long-held beliefs: that families, rather than the federal government, should be the “sovereign sphere” for deciding how to spend public money for education. DeVos also made a plug for her Education Freedom Scholarship Initiative, which would provide $5 billion in federal tax credits that states could use to create school voucher programs.

Voters Pass A Tax On The Rich To Pay Teachers More

November 9, 2020 Austin Walker, KVOA. Create! Public schools, Taxes, Teachers, Wealth Tax

Marana, AZ - Prop 208, Invest in Ed, passed. A 3.5 percent tax increase will be applied to any individual making more than $250,000 a year or if a household makes more than $500,000 a year. That money will go towards public education. Meagan Brown, a special education teacher at Twin Peaks School in Marana said this additional funding is needed for the state. "Long story short, I just don't want teachers leaving," Brown said. It takes a special person to be a teacher. Brown said she's been doing it for a while.

Baltimore Teachers Demand ‘Masks, Tests And Plexiglass!’

October 4, 2020 Struggle La Lucha. Resist! Baltimore, COVID-19, PPE, Public schools

On Sept. 30, the Baltimore Teachers Union (BTU) held a protest and die-in in front of the Baltimore City Public Schools headquarters in Baltimore City. Diana Desierto, BTU member and speech language pathologist, explained: “I am out here for the National Day of Resistance to make sure that our students, families and staff in Baltimore City are prepared and will be accommodated with all the things they need to return to school safely. “I’m here to support my students and their families. It’s been a struggle for them and for all of us. Of course we want to go back to school, we just want to go back safely.”

California Schools Launch Anti-Racism Plan

September 25, 2020 MacKenzie Maya, Portside. Create! California, Education, Public schools, Racism

Sacramento, CA - The California Department of Education announced new anti-racism lessons and teacher training for school districts on Monday, days after President Donald Trump decried the notion of teaching slavery as a founding tenet of the U.S. and called for a more “patriotic education." Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond pointed to the police killing of George Floyd in May, bullying of Asian American students amid the coronavirus and a spike in anti-immigrant rhetoric and antisemitism since the 2016 election as reasons for the project.

Staff Refuse To Enter Unsafe School Building

September 10, 2020 District 75 P352X Special Education Staff, Popular Resistance. Resist! COVID-19, New York City (NYC), PPE, Public schools

Bronx, NY - The special education staff of P352X, composed of five different sites (buildings), will be coordinating a refusal to enter unsafe buildings. We have not received inspection reports from the UFT or the DOE for all five sites. When staff arrived on the first day, the promised PPE was not available and due to no fault of our administration, we still did not have enough information to have a plan for the first day back. Guidances from the department of education change and are updated daily.

‘Broken Windows’ Approach To Teaching Is Breaking Our Schools

August 27, 2020 Victoria Theisen-Homer, Independent Media Institute. Educate! Education, Public schools, Teachers, White Supremacy

In the fight for racial justice, teachers have a heavy job, for schools are both microcosms of, and preparation for, society. Because teachers serve as significant adult figures in children’s lives, their interactions with students can shape students’ sense of self and the world around them, as well as their engagement in school, personal efficacy, and academic achievement. Complex and difficult racial dynamics impact these relationships, and as calls for justice grow, it’s time to recognize this. Systemic racism is sometimes blatant in our schools.

Setting America’s Schools Up To Fail

August 20, 2020 Belle Chesler, Tom Dispatch. Educate! COVID-19, Education, Public schools, School funding cuts

Seventeen years ago, against the advice of my parents, I decided to become a public school teacher. Once I did, both my mother and father, educators themselves, warned me that choosing to teach was to invite attacks from those who viewed the profession with derision and contempt. They advised me to stay strong and push through when budgets were cut, my intellect questioned, or my dedication to my students exploited. Nobody, however, warned me that someday I might have to defend myself against those who asked me to step back into my classroom and risk my own life, the lives of my students and their families, of my friends, my husband, and my child in the middle of a global pandemic.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 »

Daily movement news and resources