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State-level battles over changes in education policy have shifted in many places from legislative chambers to courthouses, as unions and other critics of new laws challenge them on the grounds that they violate state constitutions and worker contracts.

State-level battles over changes in education policy have shifted in many places from legislative chambers to courthouses, as unions and other critics of new laws challenge them on the grounds that they violate state constitutions and worker contracts.

Since the early 1970s, the rich, corporate power brokers and right-wing cultural warriors realized that education was central to creating a viable populist movement that served their interests. Over the last 40 years, the financial elites and their wealthy accomplices have not only mobilized an educational anti-reform movement in the name of "reform" to dismantle public education and turn it over to hedge-fund managers and billionaires; they have also taken a lesson from the muckrakers, critical public intellectuals, left-wing journals, progressive newspapers and educational institutions of the mid-20th century and developed their own cultural apparatuses, talk shows, anti-public intellectuals, think tanks and grassroots organizations. As the left slid into organizing around mostly single-issue movements since the 1980s, the right moved in a different direction, mobilizing a range of educational forces and wider cultural apparatuses as a way of addressing broader ideas that appealed to a wider public and issues that resonated with their everyday lives. Tax reform, the role of government, the crisis of education, family values and the economy, to name a few issues, were wrenched out of their progressive legacy and inserted into a context defined by the values of the free market, an unbridled notion of freedom and individualism and a growing hatred for the social contract.

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.

Pennsylvania must prohibit teacher strikes to help children get the education they deserve and school districts negotiate equitable contracts, lawmakers, school board officials and parents told the state House Education Committee on Thursday.

An open message from a Kansas City teacher to the parents and  teachers of Michigan about John Covington's reign of terror when he was superintendent of  her district's schools. Covington drastically increased the class sizes of certain KC teachers following a model suggested by Bill Gates; this experiment ended, thankfully, when he left the district. Covington was recently appointed the head of Michigan's new Education Achievement Authority to run that state's struggling schools, with the power to cancel union contracts and override duly elected school board members.

One by one, teachers at public elementary schools here have been voting to buck their own union and take Mayor Rahm Emanuel up on an unusual offer: to accept bonus pay in exchange for waiving union contract provisions and keeping children at some schools longer each day.

A few weeks back, the Indiana Department of Ed opted to intervene in seven schools across Indiana. Six of the schools are in Indianapolis and one is in Gary. Of the seven, the Indiana Department of Ed is taking over five, and contracting with three different external operators to take the lead on these schools. The lever was provided by Public Law 221, which allows the state superintendent to bring in external turnaround school operators for a school that has received the state's lowest grade for six consecutive years. The operators are Edison Learning, EdPower, and Charter School USA. (The other two schools will remain under the auspices of the local school district.)

The State of Michigan is currently considering a bill that would limit collective bargaining rights among teachers. Under the proposal, paying dues would be optional. This legislation, like other so-called "right to work" laws, represents an attempt to defund and create divisions within labor unions, which severely weakens teachers' ability to bargain fair contracts, as well as the capacity of their unions to advocate on behalf of of public schools and workers in general.

I recently examined the contracts being bid out by DOE for new "local assessments" that they intend to use to evaluate teacher performance.  Though back in May, this plan was reported in NY Times as "more than a dozen new standardized tests," it really is far more. 

In 2004, the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences contracted with Mathematica Policy Research to conduct a large-scale evaluation of comprehensive teacher induction. The purpose of the study was to determine whether augmenting the set of services districts usually provide to support beginning  teachers with a more comprehensive program improves teacher and student outcomes. This is the study's third and final report on the program's impacts.

School boards typically control massive amounts of money and assets that can be dished out through contracts for services, purchases of land, and diverted into charter schools and voucher programs. Despite school boards' power, however, until now board elections around the country have typically been fueled by door-to-door canvassing rather than high dollar fundraising. But increasingly, large donations from wealthy individuals and corporations are pouring into schools board races around the country to enact an agenda that attacks collective bargaining rights of teachers unions and increases the privatization of public education through charter schools and vouchers. The Denver Public School Board race, which took place yesterday, is a prime example of outside money from wealthy individuals and corporate funded groups flooding elections. That money proved to have a significant effect on last night's election for the union-back candidates opposed to the so-called "reform slate."

If teachers approve a tentative three-year pact, the district would no longer hand over campuses to charters or other outside nonprofits.

SKDKnickerbocker (SKD) is one of the top firms providing outside assistance to labor coalitions while raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars for work to undermine organized labor, particularly teachers unions. Led by Anita Dunn, a former White House communications director and current Democratic Party advisor, SKD has spearheaded state-based campaigns for Students First, the anti-teacher's union charter and school privatization group founded by former Chancellor of DC Public Schools Michelle Rhee.

""When a deal smells as bad as this one, you have to ask: Is the push to use standardized test scores to evaluate teachers really about improving teaching and student achievement? Or, is it about finding ways for Wall Street and big corporations to cash in on Race to the Top?" asked NYSUT President Richard C. Iannuzzi."