News, Etc.

When parents lose their jobs, it has a big effect on their children.
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Al Jazeera English has all kinds of coverage of the Egyptian protests, unlike the very slanted U.S. coverage which tries to paint this as something other than what it is really about.
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NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg is always full of shit when it comes to education, and this talk about sacking 21,000 teachers is par for the course.

He's probably getting ready for a White House run by "testing the waters."
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Our Congress is trying to undermine what it means to be a "highly qualified teacher" by pushing to have unqualified and unprepared TFAs and "alternative certified teachers" meet this definition. A whole bunch of organizations are opposed to this, and they have written a letter to the president voicing their concerns, but it is probably to no avail. After all, Obama is right in bed with the privatizers.

It really IS about screwing over poor and minority children by giving them inferior teachers and programs. But that is the ultimate goal of privatization, since such children are seen as "losers" who will never amount to anything and therefore we shouldn't invest much in them in the way of programs or quality teachers.