Russ Walsh

Martin, Mohandas and Opting Out of Standardized Tests

Pictured at left is my favorite photograph of Martin Luther King, Jr. It depicts those two great heroes of civil disobedience, King and Gandhi. The influence of Gandhi on King's nonviolent approach to gaining basic human and civil rights for African-Americans is well known. Both used non-violent civil disobedience to change the world for the better. Their nonviolent model became the template for the anti-Vietnam War movement of the late 60s and for countless other protests aimed at bringing light to issues ignored by the establishment over the past 50 years.

The Real Hero Teachers

While the corporate education reform movement is waiting for Superman and beating the bushes for non-educators who will “teach like a champion”, every day in thousands of classrooms across the country the real heroes of public education are working to provide the best possible education they can to children with widely varying backgrounds and preparedness for learning, often in over-crowded and under-resourced classrooms and under the cloud of a slanderous public relations campaign that seeks to make them out as the villains in a reform fantasy.

The False Promise of School Choice

Governor Chris Christie was in Camden, New Jersey this week to praise the opening of some new charter schools that he is championing. A great believer in school choice, Christie said that parents should have “more choice, not less.”

 

I would like to take the Governor at his word on this. If I were a Camden parent and I had real “choice”, I would choose to send my child to a wealthy private school like the one Joe Kennedy, Sr. sent two of his sons to, Choate Rosemary Hall. I think all of us might do the same.

 

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What Do We Want from Public Schools?

Ok students, let’s start today with a quick multiple choice question.

Which of the following represents the best reason for having a highly functioning system of public schools?

a)    economic stability

b)    social stability

c)    political stability

d)    joy of the individual

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The Irony of 21st Century School Reform

On Friday, September 5, 2014, The New York Times carried the obituary of Michael Katz, the University of Pennsylvania professor, historian and social theorist probably best remembered today for his influential 1990 book, The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare. In that seminal book and other writings, Professor Katz was harshly critical of the Reagan and later Clinton administration take on the poor and programs aimed at poverty.

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Talkin’ Teachers Union

A Labor Day Message

Come you ranks of labor, come you union core
And see if you remember the struggles of before
When you were standing helpless on the outside of the door
And you started building links on the chain, on the chain
And you started building links on the chain.

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Putting Students First: Reformers Don’t Know What that Means

If you want to put children first, you must also put the adults who are working closest with them, their parents and their teachers, first.

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Chris Christie's Curious Commencement Speech

Rowan University, in Glassboro, NJ, will present Governor Chris Christie with an honorary degree and Christie will present the commencement address to this year’s graduating class. The invitation has stirred controversy among supporters of public education and Rowan grads, including aChange.org petition asking Rowan to rescind the invite.

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