Last week, U.S. District Judge Rebecca Doherty dismissed a 47-year old desegregation lawsuit against the St. Landry Parish School Board, ending court oversight of the district after nearly half a century. The dismissal marks the conclusion of a five-year monitoring period agreed to by the district in 2011, in which St. Landry Parish school officials […] More
I’ll be on Garland Robinette’s radio show, “The Think Tank” on WWL AM 807/FM 105.3 on Monday to discuss the ongoing legal battle over a new funding plan for New Orleans schools. Earlier this week, attorneys for Lusher and Lake Forest, two selective-admissions charter schools under the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB), argued in federal […] More
I noticed something curious on Twitter the other day. Two state chapters of the Badass Teachers Association (BATs), the rabble-rousing teacher activist organization founded by Mark Naison that fights “corporate education reform,” tweeted the exact same tweet about a study on the opt-out movement at the exact same time. This had to be more than a […] More
Last week, Rachel Cohen at The American Prospect wrote a laudatory piece about teachers unions’ efforts (shocker!) to bargain for policies that go beyond the usual issues of salaries, benefits, and work rules. As she explains: “By expanding their bargaining demands beyond wages and benefits, unions are recognizing that they can more fully support, and […] More
Oh, how times have changed. Five years ago, the New York Times praised Randi Weingarten and the American Federation of Teachers for working with state legislatures in “developing more effective teacher evaluation systems and speeding up the glacial pace of disciplinary hearings for teachers charged with misconduct.” In an editorial the Times stated: “The unions […] More
Peter Cook