History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
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Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
The bait and switch of school "reform"
- 09-13-2011
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Opinion by David Sirota/Salon
David Sirota is a journalist, radio host and author living in Denver, CO.
In recent weeks the debate over the future of public education in America has flared up again, this time with the publication of the new book "Class Warfare," by Steven Brill, the founder of American Lawyer magazine. Brill's advocacy of "reform" has sparked different strands of criticism from the New York Times, New York University's Diane Ravitch and the Nation's Dana Goldstein. But behind the high-profile back and forth over specific policies and prescriptions lies a story that has less to do with ideas than with money, less to do with facts than with an ideological subtext that has been quietly baked into the very terms of the national education discussion. Like most education reporters today, Brill frames the issue in simplistic, binary terms. On one side are self-interested teachers unions who supposedly oppose fundamental changes to schools, not because they care about students, but because they fear for their own job security and wages, irrespective of kids. (more...)
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