Democracy and Education
Greg Jobin-Leeds is Co-Founder of the Schott Foundation for Public Education and Access Strategies Fund. He writes and speaks on successful social movements, highly effective international educational practices, school leadership and political strategies. A former high school teacher and teacher trainer, he is a public school parent. This blog is no longer being updated.
Equity & Diversity
Opinion
What Would a More Democratic Student Assessment Look Like?
Guest blogger Bryant Muldrew shows us some possibilities for a better, qualitative student assessment system, which doesn't rely on the increasingly-discredited regime of standardized tests.
Equity & Diversity
Opinion
Occupy Education: Occupy the Future
In order to think about what educational reforms we need, we first have to envision the society we want those reforms to help create.
School Climate & Safety
Opinion
Fishing for Solutions
Safety. How do we define it? Can it be provided by metal detectors? Or by searching every "suspicious" character in sight?
School & District Management
Opinion
College: Educational Opportunity or Big Business?
Student loans are structural barriers to quality education, meaningful work, and economic contribution for students post-graduation.
College & Workforce Readiness
Opinion
The Current Moment: Social Justice Movements Bending the Arc Toward Justice
Economic inequities have become much more pronounced in the United States and other societies since the 1970s. As we witness what Robert Reich called the "secession of the successful," poverty and near-poverty rates are at 40-year highs and much of the middle class has been squeezed into extraordinary economic insecurity, while the top few percentiles of the economic ladder do stunningly well.
School & District Management
Opinion
Bending the Arc of Educational History: Overturning the Apartheid in America's Education System and Building a Social Movement for Public Education
Many of us at this blog know there is a need for a national movement to transform education. We know we need to create the public and political will to turn our educational system into one that nurtures children and allows then to thrive and, as Michael Holzman posted, become "capable of contributing to their civilization and public life".
Families & the Community
Opinion
The Case for the National Student Bill of Rights
Welcome again, Bryant Muldrew, as one of our most consistent and long-term guest bloggers! Bryant is helping build our Democracy and Education conversation. As readers may recall, Mr. Muldrew is a leader in the National Student Bill of Rights Movement. He is a powerful advocate for students' voices. Below, he shares with us an important story about what drove many students in Baltimore to join the campaign for a National Student Bill of Rights. - Greg
Equity & Diversity
Opinion
Apartheid Education in New York City
A new report documents that in New York City student education outcomes and their opportunity to learn are more determined by where they live than their abilities. In addition to documenting the problem, the report lays out solutions.
Equity & Diversity
Opinion
Building a National Security State on the Backs of Teachers
Joel Klein of the Murdoch organization and Condoleezza Rice of the Hoover Institution would have us believe that the purpose of American education is to better educate the military. It is difficult to think of a precedent for this astonishing view.
Families & the Community
Opinion
This Month, We Occupied Education
This is an update on the March 1st Occupy Education events. It includes excerpts from several interviews and reports concerning protests that day and why the protests happened.
School & District Management
Opinion
Setting Real Standards of Nutrition
The Obama administration is currently working to set higher nutritional standards for the food students have access to outside of the cafeteria. The administration is overlooking the nutritional value of foods served in the cafeteria.
Equity & Diversity
Opinion
Waking Up to the Reality that Education is Political
Education is always political. It can be overtly political as indoctrination. It can be implicitly political in the way that it is structured. The latter may be the more efficient.
Equity & Diversity
Opinion
March 1st, 2012 National Day of Action For Education: Occupy Education!
We call on all students, teachers, workers, and parents from all levels of education -pre-K-12 through higher education in public and private institutions- and all Occupy assemblies, labor unions, and organizations of oppressed communities, to mobilize on March 1st, 2012 across the country...
School & District Management
Opinion
No Groping Please
By the title of this blog you might assume that this blog is about an experience travelling by train or plane; however, this is about an experience in a local high school in Maryland.