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"Chicago teachers are fighting not just for fair pay and decent health care but for a host of things that will improve education for Chicago kids-smaller classes, needed books and teaching materials, comfortable and well-maintained schools. But they're running into a buzz saw of well-organized, well-funded opposition from the massive anti-teacher, pro-corporate education policy world. Teachers don't have the money or the media platform that Wall Street billions and Mayor Rahm Emanuel will get you, which is why they need our help and support. What we're seeing in Chicago is the fallout from Jonah Edelman's hedge fund backed campaign to elect Illinois state legislators who supported an anti-collective bargaining, testing based education proposal giving Edelman the "clear political capability to potentially jam this proposal down [the teachers unions'] throats," political capability he used as leverage to jam an only slightly less awful proposal down their throats. It's a political deal that explicitly targeted Chicago teachers, while trying to make it impossible that they would strike by requiring a 75 percent vote of all teachers, not just those voting, for a strike to be legal. But more than 90 percent of Chicago teachers voted to strike. It's not just Jonah Edelman, though. Rahm Emanuel worked with a tea party group to promote Chicago charter schools and denigrate traditional public school teachers and their unions."

In advancing some interests, foundations have inevitably not advanced others. Hence, their actions must have political consequences, even when political purposes are not avowed or even intended. To avoid politics in dealing with foundation history is to miss a crucial part of the story. -Ellen Lagemann, Private Power for the Public Good When Microsoft magnate Bill Gates decided a decade ago that the "solution" to what he saw as America's failing school systems was an expansion of smaller schools, he started writing checks, a whole lot of checks, totaling more than $2 billion.   Gates is not the only billionaire who has decided to make education reform one of his pet projects. Los Angeles-based developer Eli Broad, the mega-rich Walton family (founders of Walmart) and other philanthropists currently give some $4 billion a year in contributions to education. But these handouts are hardly purely philanthropic. They come tied with policy strings and a well-defined agenda. While not the only donors, Gates, Broad and the Waltons have emerged as the highest-profile deep-pocket benefactors of what has become a nationwide education reform movement.

...Now ask yourselves, What can I do? If your answer is Nothing, then you need to read teacher-turned-newspaper-reporter Kelly Flynn's piece about why we are complicit in the systemic destruction of public education across this state and the nation. Yes, teachers are partly to blame. Why? Because we don't speak out enough; we don't want to make waves; we're not political; we don't want to offend anyone. But, my friends, we are in the political fight of our lives. Our profession was, is and always will be political so long as politicians have a say in how we do our job. It's time to pull our collective heads out of the sand and make our voices heard outside the lunchroom and Facebook feed. To paraphrase JFK, we cannot continually ask what our association is doing for us; we have to ask what we can do not only for our association, but for public education and our students. If we don't, not only will many of us be out of a job, but our students will suffer as the racially and economically lopsided education 'reform' freight train rolls over us.

In a transparent attempt to punish teachers for organizing union efforts, Michigan Republicans are pushing a bill through the legislature that would prohibit public employees from sending political messages through their work emails. The bill is an attempt to stifle any union-related communication between teachers and other public employees, imposing ridiculously harsh penalties for teachers who send "political" messages

"The U.S. working class was slow to respond to the hard times it faced during and after the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Finally, however, in February, 2011, workers in Wisconsin began the famous uprising that electrified the country, revolting in large numbers against Governor Scott Walker's efforts to destroy the state's public employee labor unions.  A few months later, the Occupy Wall Street movement, which supported many working class efforts, spread from New York City to the rest of the nation and the world. Then, in September 2012, Chicago's public school teachers struck, in defiance of Mayor Rahm Emmanuel's attempt to destroy the teachers' union and put the city's schools firmly on the path of neoliberal austerity and privatization. These three rebellions shared the growing awareness that economic and political power in the United States are firmly in the hands of a tiny minority of fantastically wealthy individuals whose avarice knows no bounds. These titans of finance want to eviscerate working men and women, making them as insecure as possible and wholly dependent on the dog-eat-dog logic of the marketplace, while at the same time converting any and all aspects of life into opportunities for capital accumulation."

A new generation of education advocacy groups has emerged to play a formidable political role in states and communities across the country. Those groups are shaping policy through aggressive lobbying and campaign activity-an evolution in advocacy that is primed to continue in the 2012 elections and beyond. Bearing names meant to signal their intentions-Stand for Children, Democrats for Education Reform, StudentsFirst-they are pushing for such policies as rigorous teacher evaluations based in part on evidence of student learning, increased access to high-quality charter schools, and higher academic standards for schools and students. Sometimes viewed as a counterweight to teachers' unions, they are also supporting political candidates who champion those ideas. Though the record of their electoral success is mixed, such groups' overall influence appears to be growing, and it has already helped alter the landscape of education policy, particularly at the state level.

A year ago yesterday, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to announce he was making an unprecedented $100 million donation to help reform Newark's struggling school system. A year later, the spending of the "Facebook money" - as it's become known in Newark - has gotten mixed reviews. The process got off to a bad start when the first $1 million was spent on a public survey that critics called a waste of money. That was followed by months of political missteps and public-relations debacles related to politically linked firms hired to help spend the donation. But in recent months, the Newark-Facebook team seems to have gotten its act together, according to interviews with community leaders and education experts inside and outside of New Jersey. With a new Newark schools superintendent on board and a new head for the nonprofit group overseeing the project, the first Facebook dollars are showing up in Newark classrooms.

"John King is leaving his job as commissioner of New York State schools commissioner to become a senior adviser to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, with the "roles and responsibilities of the deputy secretary," according to the Education Department, which issued a statement giving King high praise for his work in New York. Some in New York think otherwise. Here's a piece by award-winning Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York, who was named New York's 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and in 2010, tapped as the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State. Burris has been exposing on this blog King's troubling record in implementing school reform program in New York."

"For years, Los Angeles has been ground zero in an intense debate about how to improve our nation's education system. What's less known is who is shaping that debate. Many of the biggest contributors to the so-called "school choice" movement - code words for privatizing our public education system - are billionaires who don't live in Southern California, but have gained significant influence in local school politics. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's recent contribution of $1 million to a political action committee created to influence next week's LAUSD school board elections is only the most recent example of the billionaire blitzkrieg. For more than a decade, however, one of the biggest of the billionaire interlopers has been the Walton family, heirs to the Walmart fortune, who have poured millions into a privatization-oriented, ideological campaign to make LA a laboratory for their ideas about treating schools like for-profit businesses, and treating parents, students and teachers like cogs in what they must think are education big-box retail stores."

...reminds me of what I have come to call the Rush Limbaugh strategy from posing an argument: Present a quick and compelling premise, and then argue within or against that premise. In popular and political discourse, this strategy is highly effective even though, as with the church sign noted above, the argument and conclusions depend entirely on whether or not the premise is accurate. In other words, start with a false premise and you have only false arguments and conclusions. The current discourse about education suffers under this paradigm; for example, two recent commentaries highlight just how pervasive and misleading the Rush Limbaugh strategy can be: Sol Stern's rambling endorsement of Common Core State Standards (CCSS), as a thinly veiled front for endorsing E. D. Hirsch and bashing "liberal" educators, and Joel Klein's praising of Success charters schools in New York. Vigorous and informed debate is an essential element in a democracy, just as I believe a vibrant universal public education is. Yet, when that debate becomes deformed, the results of public and political debate are also deformed. How, then, should all stakeholders in public education approach the many and varied claims and conclusions being offered about public schools and the need to reform that institution?

It is hard to put in words how honored I am to have been invited to speak to this group. I can think of no gathering whose work is more important to the future of this nation, or have handled this responsibility more honorably, than public schools principals in the state of New York. You are the last line of defense between public school teachers and a political juggernaut of unprecedented proportions seeking to change the way public education in the United States is organized. This movement, led almost exclusively by people who come from business and the law rather than education, is responsible for the public demonization of members of a human services profession unprecedented in American history, yet it commands virtually unanimous support of the press and broadcast media, leaders of both political parties, the nation's wealthiest foundations and some misguided civil rights leaders.

"Here is the bitter truth. Standardized tests are a political weapon and can be used to tell whatever story you want. The campaign to hold schools and teachers "accountable" for test scores is a political project designed to deflect responsibility away from people who have gotten obscenely wealthy over the past few decades. The concept of "failing schools" is a bogus one. Schools are being shut down not in the interest of the children who attend them, but in order to create opportunities for new players in the education marketplace."

Steven Brill has been everywhere talking about his new book, Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools, from CNN and This Week in Education to NPR's Diane Rehm show and even a sit-down with Diane Ravitch on C-SPAN's BookTV. He also talked to Politics K-12 about his book. Here's an edited transcript with highlights from our 30-minute chat, which mostly involved Race to the Top, a favorite topic for the Politics K-12 bloggers

A bombshell report by the Nutter administration on the backroom political dealings of State Rep. Dwight Evans and former School Reform Commission Chairman Robert L. Archie Jr. over a school contract fell flat Friday with City Council members, who called the men's behavior the stuff of everyday politics in Philadelphia.

Wall Street has always put its money where its interests and beliefs lie. But it is far less common that so many financial heavyweights would adopt a social cause like charter schools and advance it with a laserlike focus in the political realm. Hedge fund executives are thus emerging as perhaps the first significant political counterweight to the powerful teachers unions, which strongly oppose expanding charter schools in their current form.

The politics behind closing a "C" rated school that claims to outperform 9 out of 10 schools in the area. Scandal-plagued politicians connected to school may have spurred closing to forestall future embarrassment over how political connections helped get the charter school. Did Walcott, who comes from a part of Queens where he would be well aware of the activities of these politicians, decide to cut the cord before more scandals emerge? Does Walcott know something will come out soon?

We all know just how much Governor Christie values education, but if you thought that numbnuts, idiot and drug mule stretched the governor's vocabulary, then take heart. Over the past week, Chris Christie has added valuable new terms to his, and New Jersey's, political dictionary. Below is a guide to new terms, and old standbys, that the governor has brought back through sheer will, repetition and exasperation.

In an era when school reform and budget savings are championed by representatives of both major political parties, Long Island cannot economically, politically, or culturally afford to maintain small racially segregated school districts. Based on demographic data available in New York: The State of Learning, an annual statistical profile of New York State school districts, Malverne schools and schools in surrounding communities do not have to be racially segregated. In near by Rockville Centre, 80 percent of the students are white. If Malverne, Lakeview, and Rockville Centre were combined into one school district, the student population would be 53 percent white, 30 percent black, 13 percent Latino, and 4 percent Asian. If we think even more broadly and Malverne, Lakeview, Rockville Centre, West Hempstead, Lynbrook, and East Rockaway were consolidated into a manageable district with under 11,000 students, the student population would be 69 percent white, 14 percent black, 13 percent Hispanic, and 4 percent Asian.

"The Star-Ledger reported that Chris Christie was a registered lobbyist at the law firm of Dughi, Hewit and Palatucci that lobbied the New Jersey government on behalf of Edison Schools from 1999 to 2001. Chris Cerf, who Christie appointed as New Jersey's Commissioner of Education, was the general counsel of that law firm. That Star-Ledger article also points out that William Palatucci, a partner of the firm who lobbied alongside Christie, was "a longtime political ally of the governor" and still remains a close friend. Chris Cerf was also the President and Chief Operating Officer for Edison Learning for eight years. "

"Dear parents: As you may have probably heard, the new state test scores were released to the press and they are disastrous. Only 31% of students in New York State passed the new Common Core exams in reading and math. More than one third -- or 36% -- of 3rd graders throughout the state got a level I in English; which means they essentially flunked.  In NYC, only 26 percent of students passed the exams in English, and 30 percent passed in math - meaning they had a level 3 or 4.  Only 5% of students in Rochester passed.  Though children's individual scores won't be available to parents until late August, I urge you not to panic when you see them.  My advice is not to believe a word of any of this.  The new Common Core exams and test scores are politically motivated, and are based neither on reason or evidence.  They were pre-ordained to fit the ideological goals of Commissioner King and the other educrats who are intent on imposing damaging policies on our schools.  Here are five reasons not to trust the new scores"