This is simply amazing and I hope the national media picks up on this story. For all the attacks that teachers receive from special interests that would seek to privatize education, this is a powerful story.

The Chester Upland School District in Delaware County, Pennsylvania suffered a serious setback when Gov. Tom Corbett (R) slashed $900 million in education funds from the state budget. The cuts landed hardest on poorer districts, and Chester Upland, which predominantly serves African-American children and relies on state aid for nearly 70 percent of its funding, expects to fall short this school year by $19 million.

So basically the school district told the teachers that they would be unable to pay them come this Wednesday. Despite this major setback the teachers have decided to work for free and support the school and the community. In the age of Michelle Rhee and her Student’s First organization attacking teachers, their unions and pushing charter schools, along with hit job films like Waiting for Superman, it’s good to see a story like this.

I actually find this very disturbing. Nothing good comes out of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

This isn’t an on the one hand, on the other hand situation—they’re the same hand, spreading the influence of the very wealthy not just in what politicians get elected, but what laws get passed. And Bill Gates’ foundation is honoring that shared goal with a $376,635 grant to ALEC.

That is disastrous, they might as well give money to Michelle Rhee’s Student’s First hit group too! I suggest you make your thoughts known about this grant from the Gates Foundation to the evil ALEC. It is apparent that the foundation’s ideology is starting to be made known to the public at large.

It’s really a shame that poor kids have to jump through hoops and get put through all these programs and now different schools to get an education. I keep on saying a charter school is not a smarter school. Not for America and not for England. Just go to the public schools in Scarsdale, NY or its neighbor Edgemont, NY and you’ll see a public education that works. Now why is that? The reason is the same as it’s always been. A public school needs to have a good tax base and a good surrounding environment.

Draining money from public schools in order to fund these charter schools doesn’t help either.

In September, 24 “Free Schools” hurriedly opened, barely a year after they were first proposed. They are modeled on U.S. charter schools and Swedish Free Schools. The first of these secondary schools has just opened in my part of London, draining an immediate £15 million (about $23 million) from the three other secondary schools in the district, which are each due to lose £20 million ($31 million) from government cuts. The new school caters to 120 blazered children, for whom Latin is compulsory until 14, and History (British) to 16.

Also I agree with the author of this article that telling poor kids that they are failures and that they have horrible parents is self-defeating.

This is a shot across the bow to all the Scott Walkers, John Kasichs, Tom Crobetts and yes, even Andrew Cuomos of the world. This is an answer to conservative demagogues everywhere. You say public employees like teachers are paid too much? What planet do you live on? Your arguments are dismissed out of hand!

Seriously, here is the problem. We are allowing conservatives and their corporate and foundation allies like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to dictate the way the American people educate their children. If it were up to them we’d be prepping everyone for the business world as either the managers or the cannon fodder beneath those managers–just ask Jonathan Kozol he’ll tell you the truth. Actually, just read The Shame of the Nation.

They have turned education into yet another commodity to be bought and sold. This commodity has its own Moody’s rating system as well. It is called the standardized test that these people would have you teach to. Now I’m not against assessing comprehension but not the way they would have you do it.

In their world education would be privatized and teachers, like students, would be another commodity subservient to the ultimate masters–the owners. Teachers would have to take their scraps and like it! If they think teachers are overpaid now I feel sorry for what they would have to earn under this system!

Mr. Damon in a seperate interview to the conservative/libertarian Reason outfit points out that teachers do the job of teaching because they love to teach. They don’t do it for the money. But they need to make enough to live on!

We need to understand what an education truly means. Not every student is going to score the highest on a standardized test or meet the standards of the corporate world, but they are capable of learning something that will help them in their life. It’s quite possible that the next great artist, actor, musician, politician, or entrepreneur may have come out of school doing poorly on the tests used to judge them. However, if it weren’t for a teacher who saw their potential where would they be?

Emanuel, who was in New York for an Obama fundraiser when the news broke, has maintained that where the couple send their children to school is a personal, not a political, decision. But the choice led inevitably to criticism that city leaders who send their children to private schools have no personal stake in Chicago’s public schools.

via Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel Says No Thanks to Public Schools for His Children | Common Dreams.

You know I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to send his children to a private school. However, he should at least admit the reason why he wouldn’t have sent them to a public school in the first place.

I think Chicago if not the entire nation would benefit from hearing what someone as high profile as Mayor Emanuel would have to say about this. Clearly there is something wrong with the public education system for the mayor not to want to send his children there. So admit what is wrong and then work with others to remedy the problems.

Ever since I’ve read the Shame of the Nation by Jonathon Kozol I had issues with what is known as “teaching to the test.” This is done a lot in lower income communities mind you. In well-to-do areas that wasn’t the case so much.

Nonetheless wherever it is being done it would seem the United States is still far behind.

According to Stanford University’s Linda Darling-Hammond, who headed President Obama’s education transition team, though we already “test students in the United States more than any other nation,” our students “perform well below those of other industrialized countries in math and science.” Yet the Obama administration, backed by corporate foundations, is nonetheless intensifying testing at all levels, as if doing the same thing and expecting different results is innovative “reform” rather than what it’s always been: insanity.

What’s that saying again? Oh yes, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Thank you Mr. Einstein.

In New Orleans they do not seem to believe that public education is a good thing anymore.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina the State of Louisiana conspired with various conservative interests to break the largest union in the state, the United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO/AFT), fire 7500 school district employees, many of whom were members, remove democratic accountability in a state coup against the elected school board, and use federal Bush money to hijack the system creating the largest charter school system in the country. Now, almost 6 years after Katrina a reckoning is finally coming, though there is no guarantee that citizens will be able to reassert accountability over our schools at least we will have an opportunity to try. Several forces are coming together to make this possible.

But City Councilmembers keep postponing any rebuilding plans, while Bruce-Monroe students are stuck at an aging substitute school where they deal with mice, cockroaches, unhealthy air and constant sickness. Meanwhile, a developer has proposed building luxury condos and upscale shops on the site.

via DC Elementary School Students Deserve A New, Safe School – Sign the Petition | Change.org.

Where are their priorities? You can get luxury condos built really easily but you can’t get a new school built?

“Wait, someone scores standardized tests? I thought those were all done by machines.” This is usually the first response I get when I tell people I’ve been eking out a living as a test-scoring temp. The companies responsible for scoring standardized tests have not yet figured out a way to electronically process the varied handwriting and creative flourishes of millions of third to twelfth graders. Nor, to my knowledge, have they begun to outsource this work to India. Instead, every year, the written-response portions of innumerable standardized tests given across the country are scored by human beings—tens of thousands of us, a veritable army of temporary workers.

via The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Test Scorer.

I know if Jonathan Kozol were to read this–and he probably knows about it–he’d throw his laptop out the window. The standarized tests are not even being graded with the scantron machines (as I grew up with in the 80′s and 90′s). I too am actually surprised that they haven’t outsourced this to India.

Behold the testing empire:

Test scoring is a huge business, dominated by a few multinational corporations, which arrange the work in order to extract maximum profit.

To end..

Test-scoring companies make their money by hiring a temporary workforce each spring, people willing to work for low wages (generally $11 to $13 an hour), no benefits, and no hope of long-term employment—not exactly the most attractive conditions for trained and licensed educators.