Denver Takes Bold Step Toward Eliminating Its School-to-Prison Pipeline – COLORLINES

Already home to one of the most progressive school discipline policies in the country, Denver has set out to best even its own record. On Tuesday, Denver Public Schools and local and county police departments inked a five-year agreement specifically designed to limit student interaction with the juvenile justice system. The agreement offers a rare example of a school system that is bucking the national trend toward criminalizing student misbehavior…

Read the full article here: Denver Takes Bold Step Toward Eliminating Its School-to-Prison Pipeline

The End of the Neighborhood School

THE BIG FIX

• MARTIN AUSTERMUHLE
• FEB 19, 2013
• 26 COMMENTS

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There’s something romantic about the idea of a neighborhood public school. Not only is it the place where your child can walk or bike on a daily basis, it’s where you can meet your neighbors, attend a school play and otherwise build a community.

But that neighborhood school—the school were a child goes as a matter of right—is withering in many American cities.

Read the full article here: The End of the Neighborhood School.

Rethink TFA | The Harvard Crimson

Originally a 2009 Teach For America Mississippi Delta Corps Member, I am now a fourth-year teacher of low-income and minority students at a public charter high school in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. I would not be a teacher today without the support of TFA, and the majority of my incredible colleagues are Teach For America alumni. My principal—the most effective school leader I have ever witnessed as a teacher or a student—is a TFA alumnus.

But February 15 marks the final deadline to apply to be a 2013 TFA Corps Member, and you should not click “submit.”

Read the full article here: Rethink TFA | The Harvard Crimson.

Diane Ravitch's blog

On January 20, I published a post by a teacher who asked about how to deal with the heterogeneity of the student population. She said that charters appealed to parents who wanted less heterogeneity.

Here is an excerpt:

“We complain that charters are skimming the top, we have to take all comers and we can’t cherrypick; we can’t dump the least school ready students. We wear it as a badge of honor; we’re a force for egalitarian education for all. We’re a place where all children come together to learn. Well, that’s great.”BUT… a parent who wants to limit negative influences or increase challenge of instruction may not care about the general mission if the impact of that mission upon their child is negative. I’m not sure we can stem the tide of charters when we use middle class children as social equalizers and consider the annual limitation upon their…

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Educate All Kids Like Sasha and Malia – In These Times

Educate All Kids Like Sasha and Malia – In These Times.

Bostonians Committed to School Diversity Haven’t Given Up on Busing

Bostonians Committed to School Diversity Haven’t Given Up on Busing.

Please Stop Using the Phrase ‘Achievement Gap’

Camika Royal makes a poignant and thought-provoking argument for the need to rethink our language around what is largely referred to as the achievement gap. Check out the piece here.

Diane Ravitch's blog

There are critical elections taking place on Tuesday throughout the country that parents, education advocates, and others who care about preserving and strengthening our public schools need to take notice of and cast their ballot appropriately. Out-of-state money from billionaires and astroturf groups like Students First are flowing into state races, like this one in Tennessee and local school board elections, like these in New Orleans and New Jersey, to push damaging policies to privatize and digitize our public schools.

There are also referendums and initiatives on the ballot in many states and cities that will affect the future of our public schools for years to come. In each case, there is tremendous private money being used to facilitate the expansion of charters and vouchers, promote budget cuts, and impose mayoral control, and against allowing elected school boards to protect and support their local public schools. The hedge funders, billionaires…

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Christopher Lehman

Election season always becomes an inflated game of blame.  After all David is more David with a Goliath.

By now Mitt Romney’s despicable moment in the sun in mid-September is old news.  Not easy or even excusable news (it took him almost 3 weeks–as polls continued to slip–to say he was “completely wrong“) but it has been through the media spin and thrown back out again.  That one moment’s passing does not erase the fact that poor and middle class people have become this ticket’s foe – no need for Medicare, Welfare, Unions, Healthcare. No soup kitchen photo can hide this clearly stated platform: the 47% (or 30%) are the reason for our wavering economy, their future mooching will drag us all down.

Every faith, from Mormon to Catholic, Muslim to Buddhist, Religious to Secular, all contend that we must look out for the poor and in need.  Why not…

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