Will School Funding Reform Include Resources for Low Income Youth?

Posted on February 4, 2017 by

Summary: School Funding Reforms in Washington State and California properly should include additional funding for at risk low income youth, in order to support them toward the skill level of more fortunate fellow students. That is, if we are truly serious about improving test scores. Continue reading →

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We the People and the Slouch of the Rude Beast

Posted on January 17, 2017 by

Summary: The dangers of the coming Presidency are real and shocking and have left many still numbed; all citizens, most pointedly teachers of the youth, have a role to play in buttressing rights and freedoms we may take for granted. Continue reading →

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For-Profit Schools Make a Name for Themselves, and It Isn’t a Good One

Posted on January 2, 2017 by

Summary: Experience to this date with for-profit charter schools across the country and in Betsy DeVos’ Michigan indicates this particular free market solution simply doesn’t pencil out where it collides with a public good. Continue reading →

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Betsy DeVos, the Force Behind Detroit School Chaos

Posted on December 13, 2016 by

Summary: With apparently good intentions to help kids trapped in “low wattage” schools, Betsy DeVos, a champion of charters and school choice, by leverage of her family’s financial and political clout, has engineered changes in Michigan schools that have lowered their standing, and undercut the viability of Detroit schools. She has been tapped as Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education. Continue reading →

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People Power and the Rebound of Low Income Kids

Posted on November 28, 2016 by

Summary: Hands on school experience has joined with neuroscience and social science to prescribe quality relationships in the school lives of struggling low income students. Continue reading →

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History Lessons and Poor White Kids

Posted on November 10, 2016 by

Summary: Colonial British class attitudes linger yet in the challenges facing rural and small town white poor. Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir of Appalachian poverty, reminds that the lot of poor white kids in school follows remarkably similar patterns to that of their similarly challenged poor black and brown brothers and sisters. Continue reading →

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Charters Revisited: It’s a Broad Spectrum Out There or, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Posted on October 22, 2016 by

Summary: Charter horror stories in Newark and Detroit mask a Stanford CREDO report that finds charters outperforming traditional public schools in many areas of the country. That same CREDO report however is critiqued as statistically flawed; in truth charters may benefit kids of better organized low income families, but their selection processes leave the more intractable of the poor languishing in low performing urban schools. Continue reading →

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