Sunday links.
The Chicago insert to the Sunday NY Times answers the question, “What’s been happening with the former workers at Republic Doors?”
I couldn’t help but smile at this part of the story:
Ms. Perez said she looked back on the upheaval of the last 15 months as a mostly positive experience because she learned to stand up for herself. She was surprised, she said, to discover that her children had learned the same lesson. When their school faced closing, her daughters said they wanted to follow her example by speaking at a Chicago Board of Education meeting in support of their school.
“I really saw the example we had made by taking our factory and fighting back,” Ms. Perez said. “It was a way for our children who are the future to defend themselves as well.”
The school, Peabody Elementary School, was saved. Maybe her job will be, too, she said, adding, “We’re going to wait, and we’re going to hope.”
The Illinois Constitution says that they can’t reduce current state pension benefits. But after last week’s victory for the Civic Committee and their puppets in Springfield, some are not so sure that the corporate hogs care much about what the Constitution says.
Herb Kohl, leading progressive educator, is nicely profiled by Gary Stager in District Administration.
Charles Blow comments yesterday: The Tea Party, my friends, is not the future. You may want “your country back,” but you can’t have it. That sound you hear is the relentless, irrepressible march of change. Welcome to America: The Remix.
Whitney Tilson is a schmuck says South Bronx School. It ain’t poetry, but it’s true.
Pro-labor Craig Becker finally gets on the National Labor Relations Board. Obama makes some interim appointments and pisses off the right. (Smile.)
Maybe students are failing because they don’t speak English; or because their family lost its home and they have changed schools repeatedly; or because district leaders picked a really bad reading or math program; or because district leaders overloaded their schools with disproportionate numbers of troubled students who disrupt the classroom and make it impossible to learn; or because they have personal problems and don’t care about school and cut classes often. No matter the cause of students’ low performance, the teacher will be held accountable. The teacher’s head will roll, the principal will be fired, the school will be stigmatized and shuttered and turned over to others–perhaps an entrepreneur who knows how to play with data and make things look better, possibly by getting rid of low-performing students and replacing them with willing students. Diane Ravitch
