Florida

"Corporate reform" isn't doing anything good for public education, says Stan Karp, the director of the Secondary Reform Project for New Jersey's Education Law Center. Speaking at the Northwest Teachers for Social Justice Conference in October, Karp criticized the corporate attitude that is guiding major "reform" legislation. 

The nation is not going to improve the educational outcomes and lifetime opportunities of its neediest citizens until we turn around our lowest-performing schools. The question has been – and remains: How do we do that? Under the federal School Improvement Grant program, the answer is for schools that are targeted for the grants to adopt one of four school improvement models, ranging from a purge of school leadership to closing the school. Communities for Excellent Public Schools and a growing list of community-based organizations in low-income communities of color across the country have signed a petition urging Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to consider a different solution to turn around schools and sustain improved performance.

It’s no surprise that the voice of educational opportunity is spreading and growing louder as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Education has always been the bridge to prosperity and opportunity for Americans. And it still is: The unemployment rate for college graduates is less than half what it is for non-college graduates.

But the nation seems to have forgotten this.

No classroom factor is more important in the success of students than teachers. Unfortunately, that message often gets lost in today’s education debates. We are particularly concerned about the toll that the bashing of teachers, budget cuts, and pressure to produce test scores is taking on our nation’s teaching force.

Putting young people in jail – particularly for nonviolent offenses – is a failed strategy, according to a new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation that relied on decades of research and data such as this: “Nationally, just 12 percent of the nearly 150,000 youth placed into residential programs by delinquency courts in 2007 had committed aggravated assault, robbery, rape, or homicide.” The greatest proportion of incarcerated youth – about 40 percent of the total, and disproportionately youth of color – are held in locked, long-term correctional facilities.