This article appears in the Spring 2016 issue of The American Prospect Magazine. In 2013, citing a $1.4 billion deficit, Philadelphia’s state-run school commission voted to close 23 schools—nearly 10 percent of the city’s stock. The decision came after a three-hour meeting at district headquarters, [...]
The words of James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing” echoed down Drexel Ave on Chicago’s South Side the mild summer evening of September 8, 2015. Down the street from the Chicago home of President Obama, the Dyett hunger strikers and their supporters, holding [...]
By Willie M. Zanders, Sr. | Originally Published at New Orleans Public Schools Employees Justice. May 18, 2015 | Photographic Credit; Original Plaintiffs and Class Representatives / A Square Photo New Orleans Public School Employees Will Request a Congressional Hearing on the $750 Million Federal Fund to [...]
By Karran Harper Royal and the Coalition for Community Schools | Originally Published at The New Orleans Tribune. May/June 2015 Edition A new eport recently released by the Coalition for Community Schools and the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) finds that the drastic growth of overinvestment in [...]
What they won’t tell you about the education reforms in New Orleans? By Raynard Sanders, Ed.D. | Originally Published at EmpathyEducates. March 30, 2015 The corporate education reforms in New Orleans have been touted as the national guide for turning around urban school districts. As a result [...]
Today’s New York Times tries its hand at explaining why on earth something as silly as neighborhood public schools could bedevil Rahm Emanuel right out of his incumbent throne as Mayor of Chicago. My home is on Chicago’s South Side, on a street full of cops [...]
By Raynard Sanders, Ed.D. | Originally Published atThe New Orleans Tribune. January 22, 2015 | In August 2012, Recovery School District Superintendent Patrick Dobard gets off the school bus at James Weldon Johnson Elementary School in New Orleans. Since then, Johnson – which was one of the [...]
Why is it that the future of our children can only be seen as a case of "arrested development" and why is it that parents who fight for the rights of our young are repeatedly arrested? [Again!] Perhaps the answer can be found in a [...]
We, the people, wish to right a wrong. Our Neighborhood High School Walter H Dyett High School is under siege. The School Board, Alderman Will Burns, and the Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel have given us ample reason to believe we must save our children, save [...]
