By Cynthia Tucker Haynes | The 74
Isn’t public education presidential? Isn’t it more important to the nation than Donald Trump’s buffoonery or the size of Bernie Sanders’ crowds?
Well, of course it is.
Every candidate on the campaign trail should have a plan to overhaul the nation’s public schools to ensure that every child, no matter his parents’ income or family structure, gets an excellent education. The crosswinds of a globalized economy demand it.
By Anyta Brown | The 74
When you grow up poor, it sometimes feels like the deck is stacked against you.
It can be hard for kids to find the right role models, so when you see someone from your community make it the right way, that’s something to celebrate. That’s how I feel about President Obama’s new appointee as Secretary of Education, John King. Dr. King’s personal story shows how a kid can go from a Canarsie public school into the President’s Cabinet.
By Eliza Shapiro | Politico NY
Families for Excellent Schools, the charter school advocacy group, will hold a rally of charter teachers next Wednesday in an attempt to undermine the United Federation of Teachers’ representation of public school teachers, according to several people with knowledge of the event.
By Carolyn Phenicie | The 74
Discussion of education issues was slim and scarce again at Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debate, with only two brief mentions of education as a civil rights issue and a solitary question devoted to higher education.
However, the two frontrunners, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, did address education more broadly in regards to other questions throughout the evening.
New York Post Editorial Board
More than 18,000 parents and kids marched across the Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall Wednesday to demand equality — and excellence — in the city’s public schools.
They refuse to be ignored. They won’t accept the way the public-school system fails hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren — largely minority. They demand change now.
In time to make a difference for today’s kids, rather than writing off another generation, as Mayor de Blasio would do.
By Carolyn Phenicie | The 74
The surprise news Friday that Education Secretary Arne Duncan will step down from his post by the end of the year also came with the bulletin that John B. King Jr., currently an advisor for K-12 programs, will lead the department in an acting capacity when Duncan returns to Chicago.
King has had a long career in education. He was a classroom teacher, helped found a charter school in Boston, ran a charter management group in New York and, before joining the Education Department early this year, was New York state education commissioner.
By Claudia Rahman-Dujarric | New York Post
As a parent, the most important decision I’ve made is where my son should go to school. Looking around at the options in my neighborhood in the South Bronx, I panicked: The district schools in my zone were among the lowest-performing in the city.
Thousands of students, most of them black and Latino, have graduated from these schools for decades unable to read at grade level. I was determined that my son wouldn’t be one of them.
By Nicholas Simmons | The Wall Street Journal
Over the past three school years, I unintentionally participated in a tragic educational case study on the west side of Harlem. I worked in the same building as the Wadleigh Secondary School, at which 0% of students in grades six through eight met state standards in math or English. That isn’t a typo: Not a single one of the 33 students passed either exam, though many of the questions are as straightforward as “What is 15% of 60?”
By Keshia Clukey | Politico NY
ALBANY — The vast majority of school districts and teachers’ unions seem to be having difficulty coming to an agreement on a new teacher evaluation system supported by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
As of the end of last week, only 12 plans had been approved, with another 47 submitted for review, according to the state education department. There are 674 districts statewide.
The new evaluation system was put into place last session. It puts more emphasis on students’ state test scores, and has been met with criticism, including from the state Board of Regents, which put in place a waiver system to delay the implementation.
By Derrell Bradford | NYCAN Blog
I have been thinking and writing a lot about race lately, and more recently race in New York. I remember when I moved here in the mid ‘90s I thought the city would be a melting pot dream, lots of different people playing and living near and with one another. Instead I found a New York that was deeply divided. For me it was Manhattan below 96th street; where the trains ran on time, the cops were present, and the delivery guys always showed up. But with everything else, you took your chances. New Yorkers hung out in small groups that were professional or educational cliques where the only way in was to be a card-carrying member or to have the right degree. Most surprisingly, New Yorkers didn’t hang out “together.” I’d go one place and it was all white. I’d go another and it was all black. New York was like a mosaic; from a distance it was beautiful and fluid but up close it was just lots of little single-color tiles separated by hard lines of concrete.