By Michael Finn and Michael Jones. As the dust settles on the 6-day UTLA strike, we can see education policy in the City of Los Angeles with fresh perspectives and fresh options. The demands of Los Angeles teachers were supported by an overwhelming majority of parents, students, and community members. Lower class …
By Michelle Strater Gunderson. 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 …
By John Thompson. I wish I didn’t have to write a positive review of Alex Molnar’s “Dismantling Public Education: Turning Ideology into Gold.” But, as Molnar explains, the toxic effect of neoliberal, market-driven school reform provides an exceptionally clear example of privatization’s …
By Michelle Strater Gunderson. Last week a group of my first grade girls was taking an unusually long time in the bathroom. When you teach little ones you get a sixth sense for when something is going on. I knocked on the door and said, “Dear ones, whatever can be keeping you?” The ring leader answered me with …
By John Kuhn. The following is a speech delivered on March 5, 2017, to the Association of Texas Professional Educators Legislative Action Weekend. I have three older sisters who are all teachers. When I became a teacher too in 1997, the first advice they gave me was, “You need go join ATPE.” And …
By Paul Horton. During the last year the Southern Poverty Law Center has reported an increase in hate crimes and hate groups. As political discourse in the United States in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has become increasingly focused on identity politics, ethnic, cultural, and racial …
By John Thompson. Rachel M. Cohen’s “The War on Public Schools” warns that “Charters, vouchers, and disposable teachers are Trump’s targets.” Cohen’s American Prospect article details both the president-elect’s agenda, and a political history that Democrats shouldn’t ignore. Trump has long …
By John Thompson. There are so many reasons why anyone interested in public education should read Marta Jewson’s latest expose of the high profile New Orleans SciTech Academy’s shenanigans when providing – and not providing – special education services. Readers should follow Jewson’s links and read …
By Michelle Strater Gunderson. When I was small and my world was safe, I would wake up on Christmas morning and there would always be an orange at the bottom of my stocking – a “store bought orange” as my mother would say. Because, you see, on our family farm it was always a source of pride that almost …
By John Thompson. In the aftermath of the Trump election, and as our “post fact” politics becomes even worse, it will be interesting to see what school reformers do. Will they double down on their truth-challenged spin on charter schools, or will they become more circumspect in using evidence? The latest …
