Parents, students and civil rights advocates protest the mass closings of public schools

02-12-2010

Opinion by Leonie Haimson/Huffington Post Leonie Haimson is Executive Director of Class Size Matters

In communities all over the country, resistance is building to the mass closings of neighborhood schools. Instead of strengthening our neighborhood schools, that have for generations accepted and served a variety of students, and providing resources and reforms like smaller classes that have been proven to work, officials are pursuing a scorched earth policy -- as during the Vietnam war, when the military claimed they were forced to destroy villages in order to save them. Here in New York City, rallies and protests have attracted thousands, culminating in a tumultuous eight hour meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy, at which parents, students and teachers pointed out how the Department of Education and Chancellor Joel Klein had unfairly targeted their schools, putting forward misleading statistics and incomplete or false data. (more...)

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Parents, students and civil rights advocates protest the mass closings of public schools

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