Tag Archives | Schools

Massive Protests Planned Against Chicago Public School Closings

By on May 18, 2013 in News 0
Pic: Shanna Riley (CC)

Pic: Shanna Riley (CC)

Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:

While Chicago’s Mayor and other administration officials seem to believe the closing of more than 54 public schools in Chicago is a done deal, resistance to the closures is about to peak just before the school board votes on the closures. This weekend, thousands plan to march to say no to the closures for three days beginning Saturday.

Resistance to the closures however, began months ago, with several protests and hundreds of hearings where parents, students, teachers and their supporters aired their grievances and demanded their schools stay open. Mayor Rahm Emanuel touts the closures will help close the $1 billion deficit. Officials within CPS said they could save as much as $560 million by shutting the doors to neighborhood schools, shuffling students to other supposedly better performing locations. However, WBEZ reported the calculation was off by $122 million. CPS admitted its mistake in arithmetic, calling it an “honest mistake.”

Mistakes in math however, are only the tip of the iceberg.… Read the rest

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Gates Foundation And Rupert Murdoch Unveil New Database To Track K-12 Students’ Personal Information

By on March 12, 2013 in News 29

Kids’ grades, behavior, medical issues, and more—with their names and social security numbers attached—will be tracked by their public schools, entered in a database, and sold to private companies, in the name of improving educational services, Reuters reports:

The most influential new product [at the SXSWedu conference this week in Austin] may be a $100 million database built to chart the academic paths of public school students from kindergarten through high school.

In operation just three months, the database already holds files on millions of children identified by name, address and sometimes social security number. Learning disabilities are documented, test scores recorded, attendance noted. In some cases, the database tracks student hobbies, career goals, attitudes toward school – even homework completion.

Local education officials retain legal control over their students’ information. But federal law allows them to share files in their portion of the database with private companies selling educational products and services.

… Read the rest

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Are Our Schools Prisons?

By on February 26, 2013 in News 25

From Modern Mythology:

Though potentially alarmist, this documentary points to a process that really started with the advent of the american education system as a part of the rise of industry. Our modern school system, though it has been vastly successful compared to many earlier systems as bad as it is, is indeed based on the whistle-blowing, mechanized and behaviorist perspective of humanity that was popular in the 1920s-50s.

Instead of changing with the times in terms of making kids into machines, and to produce “good workers,” we might consider trying to help create human beings. Because of all the school shootings, in many ways now we are facing a PKD style “thought police” No Tolerance rule toward what someone might do. How does this lack of trust effect the people within the system?

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Saving Public Education

By on February 4, 2013 in News 2

The old DeWitt Clinton building, now John Jay College, Photo: Americasroof (CC)

I’d like to use the word “justice” – that I felt compelled to tell the story of the school as a matter of justice. That we are so easy to write books and tell stories about great universities, but when it comes to high schools we don’t think that way. And yet if you ask every person on the street about somebody  who influenced them, he always or she always brings up a high school teacher or a high school coach. High schools have had a tremendous influence on who we are as a people, as a nation. And there should be documentation about the high schools, and I believe that DeWitt Clinton is a great school that has had tremendous influence on American life. – Gerard Pelisson, former high school teacher and co-author of  “The Castle on the Parkway,” a history of DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx N.Y.… Read the rest

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The Likely Effect Of Obama’s Move To Put Armed Officers In Schools

By on January 23, 2013 in News 15

The tragedy of American mass shootings inspires terrible choices. Regarding the president’s move to encourage the further policification of schools, Unprison writes:

The 18th Executive Order signed by President Obama is to provide incentives (and funding) for schools to have police oversee the children. This will create results.

School police, known as “Resource Officers” (perhaps for easier digestion) have been key builders of the School to Prison Pipeline. The fistfights and the joint in the bathroom do not result in detention or suspension anymore: now they are imprisonment, expulsion, and an often insurmountable mountain to climb towards any “normal” adult lifestyle.

A 2011 report by Justice Police Institute [suggests] that the overall damage to a community is not justified by the vague possibility that the school is safer. In fact, there are indications that the police actually lead to increased violence in schools.

Children have been the fastest growing segment in the industry of prisoners.

… Read the rest

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Armed Teacher Training Program Launches In 15 States

By on January 8, 2013 in News 54

The classroom arms race is on. ThinkProgress reports:

An Ohio gun owners’ group is launching an “Armed Teacher Training Program” to instruct teachers and school staff on how to shoot off firearms in the classroom.

Perhaps at the outlandish suggestion of the National Rifle Association, who last month called for armed guards in every school as a response to the tragedy at Sandy Hook elementary, such programs are popping up around the country.

As of Wednesday, the Armed Teacher Training Program has attracted more than 600 applicants from several states including Ohio, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and West Virginia. “We knew this would be popular, but the response has exceeded out expectations,” said Jim Irvine, Chairman of the Buckeye Firearms Foundation.

… Read the rest

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33 Michigan Public Schools Closed Today For The Mayan Apocalypse

By on December 21, 2012 in News 3

Being in school is definitely weirder now than when I was a kid. Via NBC News:

More than 30 Michigan schools closed for the holidays two days early, in part because the Mayan calendar predicts the world will end on Friday, an official said. Matt Wandrie, superintendent for Lapeer Community Schools, said doomsday “rumors” are running rampant in several districts.

“Given the recent events in Connecticut, there have been numerous rumors circulating in our district, and in neighboring districts, about potential threats of violence against students,” Wandrie wrote on his website. “Additionally, rumors connected to the Mayan calendar predicted end of the world on Friday have also surfaced,” he added.

He noted that Twitter was lighting up with posts with sentiments like: “Friday would be a great day to go out w/ a bang.”

… Read the rest

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Texas School District Investigates Muslim Bias, Finds Christian Bias Instead

By on December 17, 2012 in News 9
muslim rage

Picture: Flickr user derek7272 (CC)

Despite having the most wealthy and politically powerful voice in the country, some zealous Christians never feel secure or safe enough. When radical right-wingers aren’t decrying the insidious secularism of those shifty-eyed atheists, they’re more often than not found using law enforcement, legislation and military strength to discriminate against Muslims whom they feel, without a sense of irony, are going to trample on their religious freedom.

Public school policies are no exception. After the paranoid complaints of an Irving, Texas resident with the email header ‘IRVING ISD INDOCTRINATING ISLAM’, (which would have gone directly in my SPAM folder with the other psychotic FWDs and conservative rantings), school board members and district officials leapt at the opportunity to ”stand up against the pro Islamic teaching in our public schools.”

Via AlterNet:

The alleged indoctrination had to do with the fact that the district uses a state-wide teaching program called CSCOPE, which is put together by the Texas Education Service Center Curriculum Collaborative, administered by an organization called Region 10 .

… Read the rest

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Texas Schools Punishing Students Who Refuse To Wear Microchip Tracking Devices

By on October 17, 2012 in News 23

Via Russia Today, being remotely tracked may become part and parcel of being a teenager:

A school district in Texas came under fire earlier this year when it announced that it would require students to wear microchip-embedded ID cards at all times. Now, students who refuse to be monitored say they are feeling the repercussions.

Students who refuse to walk the school halls with the card in their pocket or around their neck claim they are being tormented by instructors, barred from participating in certain school functions, [and] turned away from common areas like cafeterias and libraries.

Andrea Hernandez, a sophomore at John Jay, said educators have ignored her pleas to respect her privacy and told her she cannot participate in school elections if she refuses to comply with the tracking program.

After Hernandez refused to wear an RFID chip, WND reported that Deputy Superintendent Ray Galindo issued a statement to the girl’s parents: “We are simply asking your daughter to wear an ID badge as every other student and adult on the Jay campus is asked to do.” If she is allowed to forego the tracking now, the repercussions will be harsher than just revoking voting rights for homecoming contests once the school makes location-monitoring mandatory, he argued.

… Read the rest

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Swedish Lunch Lady Told Food is Too Good for Students

By on October 9, 2012 in News 22

Picture: Vic Cvut (CC)

Your memories of lunch room cafeterias, like mine,  probably revolve around mass produced “beef” patties, unnatural-looking vegetables in industrial steam trays, and…um….sturdy looking women hefting ladles that could double as truncheons. Lunch time was something you endured rather than enjoyed. (I still remember something that they called a “Mexican Pizza” that would probably be considered a culinary hate crime today…) You’re probably glad those days are long over, but for a group of kids in Falun, Sweden, they are only now beginning.

School cafeteria Head Chef Annika Eriksson is guilty of nothing but making sure that her little customers had the very best meal that she could provide: fresh-made bread, wide selections of vegetables, and meats of all sorts. Sadly, no good deed goes unpunished, and now school district officials have instructed Eriksson to stop cooking her scrumptious spreads in favor of a district-wide meal plan. Officials feel that it’s unfair for the students at Annika’s school to get such great meals while other schools comply with the food plan, and unsurprisingly, they’d rather Eriksson to take her meals down several notches instead of attempting to make the same delicious food for the other children.… Read the rest

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