Just like New Orleanians need to repeat that it was LEVEES, not Katrina, that devastated New Orleans, we need to keep repeating that the public school system was shattered, not “rebuilt”… 
We are still not OK, six years later.
crossposted at The G Bitch Spot State education department asks board to yank Abramson’s charter–nola.com/Times-Pic In a written recommendation to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, or BESE, acting state Superintendent Ollie Tyler said an investigation launched last month has uncovered evidence that…
My mom asked me what I like about taking violin lessons.
41 signs your school district might be infected by a privatization virus (2 are joke-y so really 39 but still)
Schools have big budgets and get millions of dollars from the federal government and state governments, an amount of money that can tempt the most sincere and well-meaning person. It can seem so easy to cut a teeny corner there and plump this account over here. Or to hand out enormous contracts to 1-month old companies. Just like high-stakes standardized testing linked to punishment [closing a school is a punishment, firing principals is punishment, firing teachers is punishment, tearing down a school is punishment] can lead adults to cheat in any way they think they can get away with.
I am addicted to “I Survived…” on Biography, sneaking in bits and chunks and back-to-back episodes when no one else is home.
No caps on education superintendent and college leader salaries in THIS state.
“But education, since it deals in the first place with human organisms, and in the second place with individualities, is not analogous to a standardizable manufacturing process. Education must measure its efficiency not in terms of so many promotions per dollar of expenditure, nor even in terms of so many student-hours per dollar of salary; it must measure its efficiency in terms of increased humanism, increased power to do, increased capacity to appreciate.”
Does KIPP have success? Yes. What is the cost, though?
crossposted at The G Bitch Spot I took down a recent post on efforts by a group of parents and neighbors to create a neighborhood school at the Colton site. An email birdie sent me information, told me to disseminate, then almost immediately corrected the…
I was an 8 o’clocker, on one of the first few busses over to the Fairgrounds. Impressions essentially in chronological order:
I had a chair. Zulu umbrella. The usual Jazz Fest-y things in the bag I bought at Jazz Fest several years ago. And a big fat book for the waiting.
cross-posted at The G Bitch Spot Times-Picayune/nola.com, Artist colony at Colton school to disband; Matt Damon to help relocate rooftop garden, June 10, 2009. T-P/nola.com, KIPP charter school’s tentative hold on Colton school site is challenged, January 18, 2011. And see the comments on this post, January 19, 2011….