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A group of tenants at a public housing development in Harlem said on Wednesday that they planned to sue the city and federal governments over the construction of a charter school on the grounds of the housing project.

The Oregon House again postponed a debate and vote on House Bill 2287, which modifies the state charter school law to give developers more rights to appeals and longer contracts.

"Ultimately, as more states pass charter school amendments like Georgia, and money is sucked out of public schools, then public schools will meet the same fate as the rest of the ghettoized public institutions in America. Public education will be just like public housing, which most Americans think of as low-income, crime-ridden neighborhoods. Or it will be like public hospitals, which most Americans see as disease-ridden institutions filled with impoverished, sick people. Because, in both cases, these institutions principally serve the very poor, there's little sympathy for Americans stuck in public housing or public hospitals.  Little sympathy also translates into little funding, which perpetuates the cycle of poverty and the disintegration of our public institutions.  "

In Ed Schools housed within research universities, and in programs in educational leadership which are primarily charged with the training of school and district level leaders, we are constantly confronted with deliberations over how to balance teaching the "practical stuff" and "how to" information on running a school or school district, managing personnel, managing budgets, etc. etc. etc., and the "research stuff" like understanding how to interpret rigorous research in education and related social sciences (increasingly economic research).  Finding the right balance between theory, research and practice is an ongoing struggle and often the subject of bitter debate in professional programs housed in research universities.

After intense lobbying and lively floor debate, state House members on Wednesday narrowly rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would restore the state's power to approve charter schools.

...By not finding a mutually agreeable time to meet with critics, White House officials betray their arrogance of certainty.

The premise of this story is that the disaster of Hurricane Katrina was the weather event and that 5-year old children are unaffected today. Not surprisingly they use the example of an uptown resident who now works for the RSD. But for the 118,000 blacks who never made it back, and the tens of thousands who could never find affordable housing or work, the Katrina disaster never stopped and its emotional impact on children is as strong as ever; the same is true for those who did return only to encounter a second disaster in healthcare, housing, employment, and political dispossession.  It is inconceivable that the emotional trauma and stress on parents does not affect children; that the child does not know the origins of their own emotional stress does not mean they are unaffected.

Earlier this week it was reported that the Michigan Legislature had gone "berserk." Today, they continued their "berserk" assault on workers in Michigan by pushing forward with a series of bills that strip workers of basic protections. On a close 55-53 vote today, the MI House passed HB 4929 which prohibits the deduction of union dues by public school employers. The bill was fast-tracked through the House after being introduced Tuesday. I don't know about you, but I'm glad they took the time to think through legislation that will impair the ability of teachers to collectively bargain and protect their rights and the conditions of their classrooms. Tell me how this improves education?  Tell me how this creates jobs?  Tell me how this "puts more money in my pocket?"

"There has been a lot of controversy in Ohio in recent weeks around House-proposed legislative changes to the state's charter law that would decimate an already weak charter school accountability system (see here, here, and here). Fordham has not been shy about commenting publicly on what's wrong with the House language, nor have we shied away from arguing for stronger charter accountability and transparency. Those who know us understand our advocacy for strong charter accountability provisions are not new."

" David Brennan has cast a long shadow over this year's state budget. The Akron charter-school magnate who has given more than $5 million to Republican politicians dating back to the mid-'80s as he built a 31-school empire was the force behind a series of charter school amendments slipped into the GOP-controlled House's budget bill in late April, House Speaker William G. Batchelder has said. "

A state House Committee agreed to lift the cap of charter schools, a move backers said will offer more choices to families in failing schools. But Democrats, who sought to make 17 amendments to SB 618, said it's a mistake to allow schools to rapidly expand without a better system of accountability and making sure charter school students are achieving academically.

Gov. Tom Corbett wanted a school voucher program in his Christmas stocking this year, but the legislators decided against giving it to him. In a last-ditch effort on Wednesday to deliver vouchers this fall, state House Republican leaders failed to get majority support for this centerpiece of Corbett's education-reform package. This could push any chance of another voucher vote until after next year's legislative election.

The other day, I was walking to an appointment on East 125th Street in Harlem and saw an interesting sight outside the huge new building holding Promise Academy, the central institution of Geoffrey Canada's much celebrated Harlem Children's Zone. I saw a teacher marching about 20 children from one entrance in the building to another. All twenty children were black, dressed in uniforms of white blouses with blue trousers or skirts, and they moved through the street with discipline and purpose. This was the face of one of the city's best known charter schools I could not help but contrast with the scene I regularly see outside PS 107 on 8th Avenue between 13th and 14th Street in Park Slope when I drive by the school. There, on a typical late morning or early afternoon, I see groups of parents, virtually all white, taking their children to school or picking them up, their movements cheerful and often chaotic. The whiteness of the group never fails to stun me because in the 80's, when my friends kids went there PS 107 was one of the most multiracial schools in the city, with its student population well over 2/3 Black and Latino. This was the face of one of the city's high. performing public schools. The contrast between the two scenes struck me because of what it said about the direction of housing policy, education policy, and law enforcement in Michael Bloomberg's New York and how they contribute to maximizing segregation in the city.

"States would be encouraged to set up more high-quality charter schools, under a measure just introduced by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who oversees the House subcommittee dealing with K-12 policy."

Teachers and their supporters gathered near the White House on Saturday afternoon to chant, cheer, and march for a variety of changes they hope to see in public schools-most notably, a 180-degree shift away from standards- and testing-based accountability.

The U.S. House of Representatives took what has become a rare step today: It passed an education bill with broad bipartisan support. The vote, on charter school legislation, was an overwhelming vote of 365 to 54 -but there was still a lot of drama behind the scenes.

In a rare display of bipartisanship, the House approved a bill on Tuesday supporting the expansion of charter schools, the first part of a legislative package planned by Republicans to carry out a piecemeal rewrite of the main federal law on public education, No Child Left Behind.

"Some people, not surprisingly, weren't thrilled with my post titled "Welfare for the rich? Private school tax credit programs expanding." Here Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, looks at the criticism and gives us a primer on private school tax credit programs, which he calls "neovouchers." He's the author of the 2008 book "NeoVouchers: The Emergence of Tuition Tax Credits for Private Schooling.""

When the Michigan legislature returns from recess next week, and votes funds for higher education (far more meager than they used to be, but never mind), it will vote on Section 273a, passed by the House Appropriations Subcommittee, which, according to the Lansing State Journal, reads: It is the intent of the legislature that a public university that receives funds in section 236 shall not collaborate in any manner with a nonprofit worker center whose documented activities include coercion through protest, demonstration, or organization against a Michigan business.

The Success Academy Charter schools are among the city's highest performing and most controversial schools, as they are state-funded and housed rent-free in public school buildings, and on Tuesday a state board allowed five of these schools boards to merge under a single board of trustees. NY1's Education reporter Lindsey Christ filed the following report.