Define educator for America’s schools. It’s critical to nail this down during a teacher shortage and when there are attempts to privatize public schools. We don’t want people with inappropriate or no credentials teaching America’s children and directing their public schools. Ensuring that teachers and administrators are qualified used to be required. Since NCLB, alternative […]
Bill & Melinda Gates Don’t Discuss Their Takeover of America’s Public Schools
Bill and Melinda Gates’s 2019 letter “We Didn’t See This Coming,” is filled with their concerns and optimism about everything from commodes to climate change. Always eager to discuss their global initiatives to help the poor, and a variety of other endeavors, they say little about the aggressive ways they are remaking public education to their […]
How DeVos & Co. Use Special Ed. to Privatize Public Schools and End Student Services
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her corporate friends are about dumping civil rights protections regarding IDEA. Special education has become a means to transform public education into choice and charter schools while ending student services. This is done by defunding special education and convincing parents that services don’t matter. Dismantling services in public schools shouldn’t be allowed. […]
Charter/Community Schools & Partnerships: Privatization Ending Public Education
A charter school can be a community school, and vice versa. ~National Center for Community Schools There’s new school management these days that might seem nice, but scratch beneath the service and it is privatization and the theft of America’s democratic public schools. There are two points in this blog post. Community schools might be […]
Teach for America: Their Harmful Effect on Special Education
Since 1990, America has put many school children, usually poor, in classrooms with Teach for America Corps Members (CMs) who get five weeks of training. They’ve also placed novices in special education classrooms. Many corporations and individuals donate to this group, undermining professional teachers who commit to teaching as their choice of a career. There’s […]
School Choice Deception: Florida’s Plan and Students Who Don’t Measure Up
Florida is a bellwether state. What happens to schools there will move to other states in one form or another. I would like to share a personal story of how I met school choice as a teacher in Florida and how it helped cement in me the desire to advocate for a public school system […]
Quit Saying Special Ed. Costs Too Much! 8 Cost-Cutting Signs to Watch Out For
In 1975, President Gerald Ford signed Public Law 94-142. The law guaranteed every child a free appropriate public education. This positively impacted millions of children across the country. The law was later reauthorized and renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Many politicians never wanted to fund special education. From the start, there was no […]
Despite F Ratings, Dyslexia Charter School Has Gotten Repeated State Approval
Interest in charter schools for students with disabilities is on the rise. Will such schools destroy the Individuals with Disabilities Act’s (IDEA) rights of children? IDEA is the reauthorization of the 1975 Public Law 94-142. While parents might be dissatisfied with dyslexia programming in public schools, how can they be assured charter schools will provide […]
Gates’s Blunders Destroy Teachers and Public Schools!
In a democracy, all powerful institutions that affect our lives need vigilant oversight. ~David Callahan, The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age (p. 304) As grills get fired-up for the 4th of July, dark clouds hang over the country. Here’s one. We learned through a RAND report, that the Bill & […]
Poverty & Reading: The Sad and Troubling Loss of School Libraries and Real Librarians
My last post listed reasons why many children don’t learn to read. Poverty was behind many of the items. Poor students attend poor schools where they miss out on the arts, a whole curriculum, even qualified, well prepared teachers. Students might end up in “no excuses” charter schools with only digital learning. But, next to […]