YouTube IntroductionWhat’s really happening in education politics? Would you believe it’s a battle between greedy school teachers and corporate CEOs who want what’s best for the children? Well, not so much. Charter schools backed by these so-called “education reformers” aren’t necessarily better than standard public education – it’s actually been proven that they aren’t. Charter […]
Memphis Commercial-Appeal Continues to Ignore Reasons Behind Projected School Budget Deficit
February 2, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Today the Memphis Commercial-Appeal has a big story on the 80-90 million dollar hole in next year’s school budget for the new “unified” Shelby County Schools. Reporter Michael Kelly manages to point to a number of reasons for the shortfall without ever mentioning the primary reason, charter schools, the expansion of which creates inefficiencies throughout […]
Obama Pushes Apartheid Charter Movement in Georgia Over the Top
November 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment
My first year of teaching was in Georgia in 1971, one year after the end of segregation in Washington County, where I would teach Title I English at TJ Elder Jr. High School. The personnel director (before people became human resources) wore a white suit and white patent leather loafers, and he grinned widely as […]
New “parody” video from At the Chalk Face. I really have other things to do, though
August 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Summer #school recap: teaching the #olympics in 2nd grade
July 23, 2012 By 4 Comments
![photo[2]](http://shaunpjohnson.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/photo2.jpg?w=108)
Every one of the last three summer’s I’ve taught at this school, I’ve tried to establish some kind of curricular theme over the four weeks to saturate students with content. Every objective or skill or whatever was tailored to that overall theme. As we all know, students do better when they read something on which […]
Closing of a school in many ways is objectionable, charter or not
July 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment
A link to an article about a California charter school came my way, it’s charter is about to be revoked. I don’t know anything about this story, I’ll look into it when I have a moment. However, here’s what’s objectionable to me: In April, Constellation Middle School, Long Beach’s oldest charter school, was forced to […]
Guest Post: Linda Sutton to Washington State Voters
July 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment
By Linda Sutton Defeated in 1996, 2000, and 2004, the Charter school industry will NOT give up. Another initiative is scheduled for this year’s ballot. Unfortunately, the AP Sunday article begins with “some research has found” and spins in favor of charters. Washingtonians were right in voting down this idea three times, and I would […]
On my first day of #summer #school
June 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment
As a teacher educator, I’ve valued my elementary teacher over the last few summers. This time around, it’s a rising third grade class of 16 students. I’ll write about this here from time to time, with the potential of collecting more of my thoughts down the road. There’s one really striking thing I learned today. […]
A complicated relationship to #charter #schools @dianeravitch
June 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Diane Ravitch discusses a brief vision of charter schools for the Answer Sheet. On their original intentions: Budde saw charters as a way to reorganize public school districts and to provide more freedom for teachers. He envisioned teams of teachers asking for a charter for three to five years, during which time they would operate with […]
An excellent round up of links and stories on the #edreform crisis in #philly
May 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment
I’ll refrain from mentioning the person for now, but I was sent an email with a bunch of great links and updates on the battle for Philly schools. Here they are, pasted below. Pennsylvania Education Crisis Highlights – May 29, 2012 Pa. school districts anticipate further cuts More than half of Pennsylvania’s school […]
The vaunted(?) TEP #charter #school not abiding by its no excuses ethos, so why is the principal still gainfully employed?
March 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment
I feel bad. I visited TEP. I saw the kids, the conditions, I’ve reflected on this before. I’ll say it again: the inmates are running the asylum. The TEP Charter School is now embroiled in the NYDOE teacher evaluation data kerfuffle. Its “star” teacher received a pretty terrible rating despite the very high compensation, which […]
Why would a new CA charter operator require so little?
This is why you can’t take many of the contentions seriously, that market-oriented advocates are trying to strengthen the teaching profession. Otherwise, they would be models of professionalism and require more than basic skills and sub-credentials. Thanks to CG on Facebook.