Reposted with permission from Peg with Pen. Big picture – this is about compliance. This is about colonization. Compliance is necessary in order to profit and control a population so that the outcomes fit the needs and demands of the market and the elite. Children living in poverty must learn to regulate their emotions as the…

Many of us painfully recall our last Broad Superintendent, Dr. Goodloe-Johnson and the chaos she wrought through school closings, successful programs being decimated, an increase in bureaucracy, nonsensical rifing of teachers and a regime of fear. This kind of disruption has been felt by other districts who hired superintendents trained by the billionaire Eli Broad who thinks all schools should be privatized. At…

A must read. The introduction of this book is about charter schools, Milton Friedman, the “Chicago School” and post Katrina New Orleans. Whether it is a real crisis or one that is manufactured, “disaster capitalism”, as described by Naomi Klein, is the tenet that is in play when it comes to privatizing our pubic schools…

To Kill a Vampire: The Continued Resurrection of Charter Schools in Washington State Washington state residents have voted charter schools down three times. Twice, initiatives were placed on a statewide ballot—once in 1996 and then in 2000—and both were defeated. The same happened with a referendum in 2004. In 2012, charter school proponents were able…

Put on your dunce cap Arne Duncan and go sit in the corner! And while you’re at it, read a history book or two. Rosa Parks, a well-loved and respected activist who didn’t know that her actions would spark the beginning of a civil right’s movement, had a quiet dignity about her. She risked gong…

The Green Dot charter chain tried to sneak through a project to open a high school in Seattle’s south end as they had done with a middle school last year. Southeast Seattle is made up of minority communities which create a rich and diverse culture adding to the fabric of Seattle. Green Dot charter school…

Whenever Bill Gates wants to justify the ideas he imposes on public school children around the country, he relies on the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) to appear with a research paper or study, that is not peer reviewed, to prove his point. They do as he bids. Recently CRPE held a forum on charter schools at…

Back in the early 2000’s Sun Microsystems’ Scott McNealy described the pending merger between Hewlett-Packard and Compaq as “the sound of two garbage trucks colliding”. Whenever I read through the 449 page abomination that is the 2016 re-write of the 1965 ESEA – later rebranded as the ESSA – I can’t help thinking of that phrase. The law really is…

Putting students in front of a computer and expecting them to have a “quality” education, a principal who has no accreditation as a teacher or a principal, a demand for time and money from mostly low income parents…how would this play out in Queen Anne? But it’s OK for minority students on the south end of…

West Virginia’s Teachers became guinea pigs in a state sanctioned experiment to lower the cost of healthcare by directly linking teachers’ implied unhealthy choices – measured through steps, blood glucose, and waist size –  to the rising cost of healthcare. One under examined, but critical, contributing factor to the West Virginia Teachers’ wildcat strike was a battle over healthcare…