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Michael Dunn's Blog (106)

Left Wing USA Today Supports Education Revolution

The New York City teachers union, United Federation of Teachers (UFT), has sued to block the city from opening 20 more charter schools. USA Today columnist…

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Added by Michael Dunn on June 17, 2011 at 11:15pm — No Comments

Republican Teachers Rebel Against Party, Demand Higher Taxes

Republican teachers in the California Teacher Association’s (CTA) Republican Caucus, are calling on their local Republican legislators to get on the bandwagon and support Gov Brown’s tax extensions,…

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Added by Michael Dunn on June 17, 2011 at 11:14pm — No Comments

Lies of Our Times—LA Mayor Says Firing Teachers Improves Student Learning

In an Op Ed in the Los Angeles Times today, LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said that “the crisis in Los…

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Added by Michael Dunn on June 17, 2011 at 11:12pm — No Comments

Kids May Not Know Democracy, But They Know A Bum Deal When They See It

(Expanded version of the Letter to the Editor that I submitted to the San Francisco Chronicle this week):

In the Sunday Insight, (San Francisco Chronicle, 6/12/11), California State Supreme Court Justice Ming W. Chin…

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Added by Michael Dunn on June 17, 2011 at 11:11pm — No Comments

CA Teachers to Inject Students Rectally

SB 161 (Huff), a bill that allows non-medical personnel to administer Diastat rectally to students having epileptic…

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Added by Michael Dunn on June 17, 2011 at 11:10pm — No Comments

Homeless Woman Arrested For Sending Her 5-Year-Old To School & Embezzled By the School District

Tanya McDowell, who is homeless, faces 20 years in jail and a $15,000 fine for first-degree larceny,…

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Added by Michael Dunn on April 28, 2011 at 9:25pm — No Comments

Teachers Veto Parent Trigger

In a potential (albeit double-edged) victory for teachers, they may gain the power to nullify charter conversions resulting from California’s Parent Trigger law. The law has been in limbo, as the State Board of Education tried to resolve conflicts and ambiguities in its original wording. A final version probably won’t be completed…

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Added by Michael Dunn on April 27, 2011 at 11:07pm — 3 Comments

Accountability on Crack

NCLB is not going anywhere soon, nor is our national obsession with accountability for…

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Added by Michael Dunn on April 27, 2011 at 11:03pm — No Comments

The Insatiable Rich

Some sobering facts by Hendrik Van den Berg, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, from his article “Our Growing Income Inequality (It's NOT an Accident)”

Growing Income Gap

Forty years ago, the…

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Added by Michael Dunn on April 27, 2011 at 11:00pm — No Comments

Toddlers, Enemies of the People! The Decimation of Preschool in America

The National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER: www.nieer.org) has just published its annual “State of Preschool” survey, which shows that overall funding for pre-kindergarten programs…

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Added by Michael Dunn on April 27, 2011 at 11:00pm — No Comments

Arne Duncan: 80% of America’s Schools Are Failing

For once it appears that Ed Deformer in Chief, Arne Duncan, is saying something honest about Ed Deform: NCLB is an utter failure. On Wednesday, Duncan told Congress that over 80,000 of the nation’s 100,000 public schools could be labeled as failing under No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Duncan said that this statistic, based on an analysis of testing trends and the law’s pass-fail school rating…

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Added by Michael Dunn on March 11, 2011 at 12:42am — 1 Comment

Birth of California's First Mega-Charter School

Two of California’s largest charter school organizations are planning a merger which would make the new organization one of the biggest in the U.S. with 12,000 students. Talks are currently underway between financially struggling ICEF Public Schools and Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, both… Continue

Added by Michael Dunn on March 11, 2011 at 12:40am — No Comments

Charter Schools: The New Jim Crow

The Civil Rights Project, at UCLA, has just released a new report documenting the intense segregation that occurs at charter schools. The organization has been studying charter schools for seven years and has found that students are substantially more isolated by race and class than at traditional public schools.…

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Added by Michael Dunn on March 9, 2011 at 1:05am — No Comments

Public Sector Pensions: Too Big To Fail?

Public sector pensions have become a popular bogey man. It is true that most have huge unfunded liabilities and this is a problem. However, the blame is always placed on the workers themselves who have nothing at all to do with the problem. The pensions are in trouble primarily because the financial crisis…

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Added by Michael Dunn on March 9, 2011 at 1:03am — No Comments

Protecting Poor Kids By Firing Veteran Teachers (& Undermining Collective Bargaining)

An appeals court yesterday refused to delay a settlement that would shield low income schools in Los Angeles from layoffs. The settlement came in the aftermath of a lawsuit by the ACLU on behalf of low income families who argued that seniority-based layoffs…

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Added by Michael Dunn on March 9, 2011 at 1:01am — No Comments

Idaho Students Walk Out , Idaho Union Mourns

Public school students throughout the State of Idaho staged a series of walkouts and demonstrations last week to protest planned budget cuts and teacher layoffs. Hundreds of students walked out in Boise and other cities, while at least 100 Boise High School students staged a sit-in at the state capitol…

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Added by Michael Dunn on March 9, 2011 at 1:00am — No Comments

Brave New Common Core Curricula

Support for Common Core Standards (CCS), or the idea that all students across the country should be taught the same rigorous material, is growing. 40 states have already adopted the national CCS for math and English, while the…

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Added by Michael Dunn on March 9, 2011 at 12:52am — No Comments

Relax, Public Pensions Are Fine!

Why all the sturm und drang around public sector pensions? Like most crises that get conservatives’ panties in a bunch, the crisis around public sector employee pensions is not a crisis at all. It is yet another attempt to squeeze workers so that the rich don’t have to pay any…

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Added by Michael Dunn on March 9, 2011 at 12:30am — No Comments