Anthony Cody, a National Board-certified teacher in the Bay Area, has launched a project to get teachers to write to President Obama. He’s planning on gathering the letters and mailing them to the White House on November 23rd. Here’s mine:
Dear President Obama,
I’m not a worrywart by nature. I teach 5th grade in a high-poverty school [...]
Posts under ‘Government’
Resegregation: What I Worry About
War v. Education
From the American Friends Service Committee. Hurrah for Quaker simplicity…
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Health Care & Education, Part 2
According to the NYTimes, Obama’s been reading the same NYer article I wrote about last week:
President Obama recently summoned aides to the Oval Office to discuss a magazine article investigating why the border town of McAllen, Tex., was the country’s most expensive place for health care. The article became required reading in the White House, [...]
Funny Things About Federal Funds
In today’s LA Times Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, and Steve Zimmer, board member-elect of the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education, called on teachers to take a pay cut to save the district $45 million.
In response I offer the following federal stimulus and bailout headlines:
Stimulus [...]
Teachers & Money
There’s a lot of talk out there to link individual teacher pay to test scores. While I’d be thrilled to get a pay raise (and in an earlier post, I shouted, ‘Bring it on!’), here’s why I don’t think this is a good idea.
First all the usual reasons: teachers will teach to the test and [...]
Health Care v. Education, Part 1
This week’s New Yorker has a great piece on health care costs. Want to know where the US Gov. spends the MOST money per capita on healthcare?
That would be McAllen, TX in the Rio Grande Valley. Lat year Medicare spent $15,000 per enrollee there, 2x the national average.
Where the heck did all that money go [...]
Cuts Hurt Kids!
Yesterday Cuts Hurt Kids emailed asking for support. Here’s what they said about themselves:
The concept behind CutsHurtKids.org is a simple one: help bring unity among the grassroots resisters to budget cuts.
1. See what’s happening at other schools, and
2. if people know of an action to be added, they can submit links of online info/videos/pictures & [...]
Danger!!!!! (More Tales of LAUSD Waste)
This week we had an inspector come by from the safety branch of LAUSD. He had a grim face, a clipboard, and a scratchy pen he wielded with gusto and relish. He scuttled through classroom after classroom and uncovered MANY examples of clear and present DANGER!!!!
Most notably: couches. Yep. That’s right. Couches. Sofas. Cushy chairs. [...]
Cracked, Broken, and Mute: How LAUSD Wastes Money
Yesterday’s LA Times reported the following from our globe-trotting, glad-handing, tv-anchor-bopping mayor (this isn’t TMZ but, btw, who was that cute lady beside him gazing adoringly at him on yesterday’s news reports?):
At Liechty, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa led a forum Monday with teachers and parents, stressing the need for “shared sacrifice” and “creative solutions” to save [...]
Pink Slips Continued
OK, so maybe it’s not the clearest data on Planet Earth, but it’s what arrived in my mailbox today. Basically, it says the union is asking for a 95:5 teacher: administrator ratio.
That would mean 30,057 teachers and 1024.18 administrators in the union’s ideal world.
The latest district proposal is 30,057 teachers: 1582 administrators (rounding so we [...]
