Another crazy liberal on the tee vee. Recognize her?

So why did they cut all the stuff about increasing taxes to pay for schools? Cuz that's what I said the crazy liberal lady was talkin' about.

A quick note on the saving of Catherine Ferguson School

I know it freaks us progressives out to see public schools become charter schools, even when it means saving a really really important and cool institution like Catherine Ferguson in Detroit. 

Charter Schools in and of themselves are not bad things. 

Two of my three children are enrolled in a charter school.  The sponsors of my kids' charter are a benevolent, single family foundation, and not a for-profit corporation looking to charge a school district for the privilege of making a profit off of cutting school corners like teacher's pay.

The charter school my children attend is still part of the public school district.   They have a slightly longer school year, and required parental participation to guarantee continued enrollment.  These are not unreasonable bars to set. 

I think any time a parent has to fill out one piece of paper to get their child into a better school, you've already self-selected a higher quality of student, period.  It's called the "I have a parent who gives a shit and can perform a parental function like writing down a home address on a form" test. 

Some parents can't fill out a form.  Hell, some parents don't have an address.  There are school districts in the United States of America, I learned tonight from the head of a mofo teachers union, where one in five children are HOMELESS.   One in five.  Homeless.

If you try to tell me that a teacher who has 30-35 kids in her budget-cut classroom, and 20 percent of them are homeless?  That that teacher and her union are selfish for wanting a pension when she gets old?  What are you, a republican governor or maybe... something worse?



Don't forget that whenever Chris Matthews or some other fuckwad says "teachers' union,"  that is a smokescreen so they do not have to talk about CHILDREN and POVERTY in THE UNITED STATES.  Our country that we love so very much, Sarah Palin, you stupid git.  Freedom!

Things are going to be different for Catherine Ferguson (including union representation) but I trust the principal when she says she's confident in the school's charter holders.  For me, the smell test for charter schools is, does the charter holder want to turn a school around or do they want to turn a profit on a school?  In the second case, they must be stopped from touching a public institution.

Dear Administrators: Don't Screw Your Local School

Here's what happens if you do: My district started

a magnet elementary school that began enrolling students in August 2001. Open to all students in the district and, at first, operated contractually by a private firm, Edison Schools, Feitshans got off to mixed reviews. More than 600 students signed up to attend the school, which quickly developed a waiting list. Yet, complaints soon developed about discipline and security problems.

District officials later acknowledged other elementary schools had encouraged their students with behavior problems to transfer there. Despite efforts to diversify enrollment, other students began pulling out. Eventually, Edison pulled out, too.

So you decide to throw a magnet school contract to a privately held company. BUT you forget to throw up a gate to keep "troubled" kids out? And the teachers and administrators know this and send the undesirables your way? You get what you deserve, douchebags.

Yet another unforeseen side effect of No Child Left Behind is that teachers and administrators at local schools do whatever they can to eliminate poor-performing kids and hold on to high-performing kids. My middle child just missed the cut-off to transfer to the disrict's "gifted" school by three test points. Not three percentage points, three test points. No one at her school told me this, and I don't blame them. The local school desperately needed my kid to meet minimum standards for average test score results. But with all due respect to the awful job local schools are handed, up yours, because I'm going to do what is best for MY kid, not YOUR school. (I also think it's horrible that my district has segregated gifted kids into their own building rather than provide services within the local schools, but if this is what I'm handed I have to use it, as a parent. We advocated and got middle child transferred.)

Probably preaching to the choir here. This testing bullshit is hurting our country's ability to educate its children. Wonder why we have overwhelming drop out rates in this country? Could it have something to do with schools needing to have high average test scores?

You know the news is bad when my post about a Quaker math teacher starts with....

...we are so extraordinarily fucked up in this country, I'm speechless.




"California State University East Bay has fired a math teacher after six weeks on the job becaus she inserted the word "nonviolently" in her state-required Oath of Allegiance form."

Yeah, she's a trouble-making Quaker. And it cost her her part-time teaching job.

Teachers can't ask to be nonviolent anymore.

Just sign the damn form and don't ask questions. That's what they tell a TEACHER. At a UNIVERSITY. In CALIFORNIA.

Did I mention the "extraordinarily fucked up in this country" part yet?

Finally, yesterday's video blog

It's 18 minutes but I was on a roll. Too bad Google Videos was not. But finally....here 'tis. Some stories about education.



The Eclipse Program is typical of pre-school early intervention programs around the country.

More on Hoover High School football coach Rush Propst here.

John Archibald's terrific column on the Birmingham School system's "dropout factories" is here.