Education
Betsy DeVos Is Gone, But Her Education Agenda Is Rolling Out Across the Country
Supporters of public education and school teachers were relieved to see Betsy DeVos leave her job as head of the Department of Education, knowing full well the education policies she and former President Trump supported would go nowhere in a President Biden...
Education Secretary DeVos Is Using COVID To Get What She Wants
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr / cc As American deaths from COVID-19 crested 100,000, the New York Times reported U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos declared her intention to “force” public school districts to spend a large portion of federal funds they’re...
New Mexico Shows How Public Ed Can Thrive After COVID-19
Zia Middle School, Las Cruces, NM. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons / cc “I think we’re all going to be different after this,” Mary Parr-Sanchez told me in a phone call, “but I don’t know how.” Parr-Sanchez is the current president of NEA-New Mexico, the National...
Communities Fight School Closures And Privatization
Since mid-March, public school students in Minnesota have had to stay home because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, according to the state’s governor, Tim Walz, schools will remain closed until the end of this school year, with no guarantee that they will reopen in the...
Financial Tsunami Heads Toward The Nation's Schools
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, nearly all states have ordered or recommended school buildings stay closed for the rest of the academic year, according to Education Week’s most recent count, and “schools are likely to stay shut for months,” according to the New York...
Organizing Amidst The COVID-19 Crisis
As the 2008 financial crisis unfolded, tens of millions of Americans were hurting and making meaning of what was happening. It was the first time in my life that suddenly, tens of millions of people were significantly more ready to be organized than in the weeks...
DeVos Is Using COVID-19 To Advance Charter School Agenda
COVID-19 has shuttered public schools across the nation, state governments are threatening to slash education budgets due to the economic collapse caused by the outbreak, and emergency aid provided by the federal government is far short of what is needed, according to...
Homeschool Entrepreneurs Love COVID-19
In the early days of the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S., when the number of known cases was barely cresting 1,000, advocates for homeschooling were greeting news of the outbreak as an opportunity to promote their cause. “While the virus has caused illness and...
Amazon Is Coming To A School Near You
This is the second of a two-part article by Jeff Bryant on Career and Technical Education (CTE). Click here to read part one. The national discussion about the movement to privatize America’s public schools has mostly focused on the issues of charter schools and...
How Corporations Force Their Way Into America’s Public Schools
Photo credit: Virginia Department of Education / flickr / cc In the expanding effort to privatize the nation’s public education system, an ominous, less-understood strain of the movement is the corporate influence in Career and Technical Education (CTE) that is...