From a friend of a friends page. (Also, Ive been paying attention to what Emily Zimmer, Julian McFaul, Maria Asp, and Act for Education have been saying about the school board elections). From Patty Wycoff, a friends friend: If you want to understand the web of education reform in Minneapolis, make some popcorn and watch/listen to this.I attended a conference in Austin, TX last Feb. and met people from all over the country. Many had seen this and said their cities have the same web(minus the local players). Iris Altamirano and Don Samuels have money and employees from TFA, E4E, SFER and MinnCAN working on their campaigns. Not one of these organizations is beneficial to public schools. -they support charter school expansion, which takes students and money from MPS, reducing our enrollment, programs and services for our students. -they support TFA, which puts the least trained people in front of our most challenged kids(predominately students of color living in poverty). -they believe tenure is preventing our students from achieving. Peeps, if this was true Mississippi, Georgia and all other right to work states would be kicking our asses academically. The truth is, its the opposite. States with the strongest unions for their teachers have the highest ACT/SAT scores in the nation(MN, and MA to name a few). Vote for Rebecca Gagnon and Ira Jourdain if you want strong public schools with teachers that can advocate for their students w/o fear of termination.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 18:40:25 +0000