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As millions of students prepare to go back to school, budget cuts are resulting in teacher layoffs and larger classes across the country. This comes as the drive toward more standardized testing increases despite a string of cheating scandals in New York, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and other cities. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan also recently unveiled a controversial plan to use waivers to rewrite parts of the nation's signature federal education law, No Child Left Behind. We speak to New York City public school teacher Brian Jones and Diane Ravitch, the former assistant secretary of education and counselor to Education Secretary Lamar Alexander under President George H. W. Bush, who has since this post dramatically changed her position on education policy. She is the author of "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education."

Education The State budget reduced education funding to the City for FY 2012 by $1.2 billion. This was the largest single-year reduction in education funding to New York City and came at the same time as the City lost $850 million in Federal stimulus dollars used to support teacher salaries. To prevent catastrophic personnel losses in the City's school system, the Executive Budget provides a major increase in City funds dedicated to education, with an increase of $2 billion of City funds compared to the prior year. The State continues to disinvest in education in New York City. In FY 2002, State and City funding comprised a nearly equal portion of non-Federal spending on education. In FY 2012, City funding will comprise 61 percent of non-Federal spending and State funding will only comprise 39 percent of non-Federal spending. If the State had continued to share education costs equally with the City, the State would be providing $2.2 billion more in education funding for FY 2012. City-funded spending on education has increased from $5.9 billion in FY 2002 to $13.6 billion in FY 2012. Description of Bloomberg's Budget Proposal from News From the Blue Room NYC.gov "Despite the City's continued, strong financial commitment to education, historic State education cuts and the need to balance the budget mean that reductions in the size of the City's teaching force are still required. More than 6,000 teaching positions will be eliminated through attrition and layoffs.

THE COST of K-12 public schooling in the United States comes to well over $500 billion per year. So, how much influence could anyone in the private sector exert by controlling just a few billion dollars of that immense sum? Decisive influence, it turns out. A few billion dollars in private foundation money, strategically invested every year for a decade, has sufficed to define the national debate on education; sustain a crusade for a set of mostly ill-conceived reforms; and determine public policy at the local, state, and national levels. In the domain of venture philanthropy-where donors decide what social transformation they want to engineer and then design and fund projects to implement their vision-investing in education yields great bang for the buck.

"The Education of Jose Pedraza: Why Fixing Schools Isn't Simple Math Jose Pedraza (center) stands with his parents in the front yard of their East L.A. home. All photos by Jorge Rivas by Julianne Hing ShareThis | Print | Comment (6) Tuesday, May 10 2011, 10:02 AM EST Tags: education reform, los angeles 248Share video_thumb_education_50911.jpg infographic_thumb_education_50911.jpg Watch Julianne Hing's reporter's notebook video of her time with Jose Pedraza's family. Last year in East LA, Jose Pedraza was struggling mightily in his classes and drifting listlessly through his days. It was worrying enough to his teachers at Oscar De La Hoya Animo Charter School, where he was then a junior, that the principal called his mother Pascuala Jaramillo and asked for an urgent meeting. Jaramillo, a seasoned education activist who had organized other parents and made it a point to get to know her kids' teachers, grabbed what she calls her "bible" and ran straight to the school. It's actually not a holy book, but rather a binder of her kids' education documents and information about her own parental rights-"everything I need to defend myself," she explains. Her years of organizing other parents taught her that teachers and administrators are often too burdened by their work to be effective advocates for their students. She went ready to fight, if she had to. "When I got to the school, I got notes telling me that my son wasn't really working," Jaramillo says. "The principal said, 'His body is here, but his brain is not in the room.' " Jaramillo immediately understood what was going on. She told the principal what their family had been dealing with at home. Her husband, Guadalupe Pedraza, had been abruptly laid off from his maintenance job recently. After 12 years working there, he was told on a Wednesday that his last day would be that Friday. Jose took it hard. He had always been a quiet kid, but he started pulling away from his par

I've spent a large part of my adult life criticizing the flawed institutions and policies of public education as a teacher, an education activist, and a policy advocate. But these days I find myself spending a lot of time defending the very idea of public education against those who say, sometimes literally, it should be blown up. Because the increasingly polarized national debate around education policy is not just about whether teachers feel the sting of public criticism or whether school budgets suffer another round of budget cuts in a society that has its priorities seriously upside down.

ducation Panel to start the program at 6PM on the issues ahead for this coming school year for parents/teachers/children - preserving and enhancing public education. * Yelena Siwinski (GEM/Grassroots Education Movement) * Mark Torres (PPM/Peoples Power Movement) * Brenda Walker (CPE/Coalition of Public Education) * Clarence Talyor (Recently released book - "Reds At The Blackboard") WBAI's Radio Building Bridges: Your Community & Labor Report

The biggest problem that the education system faces today is a preoccupation with, and the application of, the factory model of management to education, where everything is arranged for the scalability and efficiency of "the system", to which the students, the teachers, the parents and the administrators have to adjust. "The system" grinds forward, at ever increasing cost and declining efficiency, dispiriting students, teachers and parents alike.

"Nor have charters been the answer. Charter school students score about the same on state tests as Detroit district students, even though charters have fewer special education students (8 percent versus 17 percent in the district) and fewer poor children (65 percent get subsidized lunches versus 82 percent at district schools). It's hard to know whether children are better off under these "reforms" or they're just being moved around more."

While producers of print-based curriculum and instructional materials are struggling, companies that are focused on technology-based instruction and tools for data collection and analysis are thriving in the K-12 market, says a new report by Berkery Noyes, an independent investment bank. An emphasis on accountability and data-driven decision-making in education is part of what's behind that trend, said Vivek Kamath, a managing director at the New York City-based bank who specializes in the education market. "Schools are realizing that they need to treat their schools like businesses," he said. "What they're looking for are enhanced analytics."

When I graduated college last year, I was certain I wanted to make a real difference in the world. After 17 years of education, I felt an obligation to share my knowledge and skills with those who needed it most.

This article has been around for a few years but continues to be relevant. Kozol contextualizes provides a good summary of the push to privatize public education. The most striking part of the article is the quote from where the title is taken, "The larger developing opportunity is in the K-12 EMO market, led by private elementary school providers", which, they emphasize, "are well positioned to exploit potential political reforms such as school vouchers". From the point of view of private profit, one of these analysts enthusiastically observes, "the K-12 market is the Big Enchilada". Kozol has shedding light on educational inequities for years. With this piece he warns of the dangers of ignoring just how motivated corporate interests are to move beyond "nibbling at the edges" of public schools and devour the whole system.

Charter schools in the US: Wall Street's education model By Nancy Hanover 11 July 2011 Last month a new for-profit investment fund was created, the first of its kind, to finance the construction of charter schools across the United States. Jointly managed by Canyon Capital Realty Advisors ($20 billion in assets) and Agassi Ventures, LLC, owned by Andre Agassi, it plans to buy up undervalued urban land and jumpstart the construction of 75 new charter schools.[1] The Canyon-Agassi Charter School Fund announcement states, "The fund will provide investors with current income and capital appreciation by responding to the growing demand for quality charter school facilities in the nation's burgeoning urban centers and by capturing the opportunities arising out of the current dislocation in the real estate market." In other words, it will buy inner-city land cheaply, develop it and then sell the facilities to charter operations. The firm expects to raise $300 million in equity and invest up to $750 million."

Critics counter that, absent clear proof, schools are being motivated by a blind faith in technology and an overemphasis on digital skills - like using PowerPoint and multimedia tools - at the expense of math, reading and writing fundamentals. They say the technology advocates have it backward when they press to upgrade first and ask questions later. The spending push comes as schools face tough financial choices. In Kyrene, for example, even as technology spending has grown, the rest of the district's budget has shrunk, leading to bigger classes and fewer periods of music, art and physical education.

Who does this site serve? "Since 1998 we have helped thousands of families around the world to find the right schools for their children. We work with individual families and with corporations. We work with gifted children, kids with special needs, or any child whose parents want to make sure he or she is in the right educational environment. Our expert consultants are trained to look beyond the superficial aspects of a school - the pretty campus, the brand new gym, or how popular it is - and instead strive to understand a school's culture, atmosphere, values, and environment. Above all else, we are committed to the concept of "fit" so that your child can reach his or her full potential. "

The lessons of this fiasco are clear: being a successful business executive is no guarantee that one can become a successful school leader. These are different worlds, which require different skills and training. To have a chance of success running one of the country's largest school systems, one needs a deep understanding of federal and state education policies, of curriculum and assessment, of teaching and learning, and of what teachers and schools need.

"About the New York Study Group The New York Study Group (NYSG) was a group of community organizers and activists who came together to study left organization, revolutionary change, socialism and political struggle. The group existed from 2006 to 2010. This website is now only an archive; we share here some of our past writings and readings to inspire future activists. As well, we are throwing in a bit about the left-unity project we worked with, Revolutionary Work In Our Times (RWIOT). NYSG had over 100 members, all organizers and activists from around New York City who were engaged in a range of exciting struggles rooted in working class communities and communities of color, from immigrant worker organizing and housing campaigns to public education and cultural work. We came together because we believe that - even though our work in these struggles to win reforms and change conditions in our communities is crucial - we also needed a space to reflect on that work as leftists, as people who believe in an end to capitalism and in the fundamental transformation of power relations in our society. If you have a story about your own involvement in the New York Study Group, have something to say about the group, or have old material (like reading lists!) from the group you are up for sharing for this online archive, please email them to rankandfilerblog at gmail. (This email address is maintained by a former member of the NYSG.) This archival version of this blog was set-up and last edited September, 2012."