This is the description of national politics category
By Paula Noonan. Both the last straw and the straw that broke the camel’s back dropped onto Jefferson County Schools on the night of September 18 at the Jefferson County Schools Board Meeting. The next morning 50 Jefferson County teachers, unable to carry any straws anymore, called in sick or took personal …
By Anthony Cody. A New Mexico mother of four has been targeted by conservative political leaders unhappy with her education activism on Facebook and in her community. Kathy Korte serves on the Albuquerque school board, and is active in a grassroots organization called Stand4KidsNM, which has an active Facebook …
succssBy John Thompson. The old test-driven, accountability-driven school reform movement is overextended, cut off, and heading for a catastrophic defeat – and they know it. That is why some of its most zealous crusaders are doubling down on anti-teacher legal campaigns. This is the accountability hawks’ last …
By Anthony Cody. In August, Louisiana teacher and investigative reporter Mercedes Schneider wrote about the dangers of having education journalism directly funded by the Gates Foundation. This morning, she followed up that post with another, pointing out that while it sounds benign to “focus on success,” this …
By Anthony Cody. A new report from Marc Tucker is gaining some support for its supposedly new approach to holding schools accountable. But I am afraid his plan makes many of the mistakes that previous such systems have made. Here is the core of his proposal: Instead of testing all of our students every year with …
By John Thompson I twice supported Barack Obama for president. Throughout President Obama’s first term, I asked what we teachers might have done to provoke him so. Were his anti-teacher policies the avoidable result of teachers and unions being too slow to address conditions in Chicago schools? By now, it is …
By Anthony Cody. The teachers of America have been learning some very deep lessons about the nature of 21st century capitalism. And these lessons may turn teachers into a political force to be reckoned with in the years to come. Those who have studied Marxist theory know that he predicted that the exploited …
By John Thompson. National and local reporters who cover the Education beat already know the full story behind Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s retreat from his demands that states comply fully and immediately to everything on his corporate reform wish list. Most have displayed balance and excellence in …
By Paul Horton. Part two of three. In the twenty-five years after the last major Civil Rights Act of 1968, most whites abandoned the Democrats in the South as white flight and the Southern Baptist Convention sought public support for private schools that were created in suburban areas like Cobb and northern …
By Anthony Cody When critics such as myself point out the very bad effects the Common Core tests are having, as they label more than two thirds of our children unready for college and career, we are accused of “conflating tests with standards.” UFT president Michael Mulgrew was making this argument on the AFT …
