"Education is under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!"

Register for the May 7 Student & Teacher Fight Back Conference.

Join students, young people, teachers and others for a Student & Teacher Fight Back Conference this May. There will be speakers, organizing sessions, strategizing and plans for action.

• How we can build a united, fight back movement for quality education
• Where is the money? The truth behind budget cuts and tuition hikes
• Students organize to stop war, racism, sexism and anti-LGBT bigotry
• End enrollment cuts--education should be free and accessible for all
• Educators fight for union rights, against privatization and layoffs
• Students and teachers demand full rights for immigrants
• Build for May 9-13 Statewide Week of Action for Education

Register for the May 7 Student & Teacher Fight Back Conferece.

Sponsored by Students Fight Back (PCC, Cerritos, CSULB, CSUF, LACC, Harbor College, LBCC, SMC, SDCC), Youth & Student ANSWER, People's History Association, Students for Justice in Palestine, PSL and more.

Download a conference flyer to distribute at your school.

For more info: 213-251-1058, info@studentsfightback.org or answerla@answerl

Este Sábado, 07 de mayo
Estudiantes y maestros Conferencia

La educación es un derecho!

Sábado, 07 de mayo, las 12 horas - 16:00
Pasadena City College, Creveling Lounge
1570 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena 91106
Creveling está cerca de la esquina de Colorado y Hill
Metro Gold Line Stop: Allen
Cómo llegar   Metro y autobuses   Mapa del Campus y Estacionamiento

Video: Únete a los estudiantes y profesores en una conferencia de luchar por la educación de este sábado

"La educación es objeto de ataques, ¿qué hacemos? De pie, luchar!"

Registro para la Conferencia de Lucha contra el 07 de mayo para profesores y estudiantes Atrás.

Únete a los estudiantes, jóvenes, maestros y otras personas por un estudiante y del profesor Fight Back Conferencia de este mes de mayo. Habrá oradores, la organización de sesiones, estrategias y planes de acción.

• ¿Cómo podemos construir una sociedad unida, luchar el movimiento para la educación de calidad
• ¿Dónde está el dinero? La verdad detrás de los recortes presupuestarios y aumentos de la matrícula
• Los estudiantes se organizan para detener la guerra, el racismo, el sexismo y la intolerancia contra la comunidad LGBT
• cortes de finalización de inscripción - la educación debe ser gratuita y accesible para todos
• Los educadores lucha por los derechos sindicales, contra la privatización y los despidos
• Los estudiantes y profesores de la demanda de plenos derechos para los inmigrantes
• Construir para may 9-13 Semana Estatal de Acción para la Educación

Registro para el 07 de mayo los estudiantes y Lucha contra el Maestro Volver Conferece.

Patrocinado por estudiantes Fight Back (PCC, Cerritos, CSULB, CSUF, LACC, Colegio Harbor, LBCC, SMC, SDCC), la Juventud y de respuestas del estudiante, de la Historia de la Asociación Popular, Estudiantes por la Justicia en Palestina, PSL y mucho más.

Descargar un folleto para distribuir la conferencia en su escuela.

Para más información: 213-251-1058, info@studentsfightback.org o answerla @ answerl

NATIONAL EDUCATION REFORMERS


LA Progressive

Dick Price and Sharon Kyle
http://www.laprogressive.com/
Dick and Sharon dick_and_sharon@yahoo.com
Dick and Sharon are a pair of citizen journalists and information activists who were fed up with mainstream media. Rather than just kvetch about the media, they decided to try to become the media. So, together they founded the LA Progressive. Dick is the editor and Sharon is the publisher and webmaster, handling all technical aspects of the site.

This site was launched in March 2008, with Dick and Sharon doing most of the writing. Today, a host of gifted writers contribute to the LA Progressive's daily offering which typically amounts to about 45 articles a week. Dick and Sharon continue to write for as well as edit and publish the LA Progressive and distribute its daily e-news each morning.

Jo Scott Coe Riverside, California
Jo.Scott-Coe@rcc.edu
www.joscottcoe.com
Excellent Video Interview about Professor Coe
http://vodpod.com/watch/4959969-jo-scott-coe-teacher-at-point-blank

Assistant Professor of English at Riverside Community College and former high school English teacher. She is the author of Teacher at Point Blank and has been a teacher of English and literature in California since 1991. Her writing on intersections of gender, violence, and education has appeared in the Los Angeles Times as well as literary venues including Hotel Amerika, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, Ninth Letter, Memoir(and), Bitter Oleander, and Green Mountains Review. Her essay, "Recovering Teacher," won the NCTE 2009 Donald Murray Prize, and other selections of her work have received a Pushcart Special Mention as well as Notable listings in Best American Essays 2009 and 2010. As an independent researcher, Jo authored and published the most extensive study to-date of Adams v. LAUSD, a nearly 10-year legal case of student-on-teacher sexual harassment, in (Re)Interpretations: The Shapes of Justice in Women's Experience (Cambridge Scholars Press). Jo values the aesthetic, political, and socially transformative powers of literary narrative--especially to dispel unhealthy silences and witness cultural blindspots. She works currently as an assistant professor of English at Riverside Community College in SoCal, and her book, Teacher at Point Blank (Aunt Lute 2010), has been selected as a Great Read for Fall 2010 by Ms. Magazine. Punk rock? Yes. Hockey games? Yes. Coffee? Always black. Find Jo on the web at joscottcoe.com and on Twitter @joscottcoe.

Betsy Combier New York, New York
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Betsy Combier's blog http://www.parentadvocates.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=488
is a jewel that chronicles the corruption in NYC's Dept of Educations (DOE)  . She has accomplished a wonderful piece of journalism, and created one of the rare places where corrupt educational governance is chronicled and revealed

Professor Samuel Culbert Los Angeles, California
<nobull2u@gmail.com>
is a professor at the UCLA Andersen School of Business who also teaches in the Education Department's Principals' Leadership Institute. Check out the following 3 minutes on ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/conversation-performance-review-11126992

Stuart Goldurs Los Angeles, Califonia
StuartComputers@gmail.com
LAUSD students to attend school on contaminated land, again!
Some schools teach only to the tests, so how are the students being prepared for the next grade and for life?
New LAUSD superintendent adds six-figure positions to management team
http://www.examiner.com/public-education-in-los-angeles/stuart-goldurs


Has been a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District for 30 years. He is greatly aware of the district waste, large bureaucracy, and other major issues of the time. He started his blog with the sole purpose of informing the world about the truths of education in LAUSD. E-mail him at: StuartComputers@gmail.com.

LAUSD has selected a new Superintendent of Schools

Karen Horwitz Chicago, Illinois
Teacher Activist forced out of teaching on trumped up charges. Started NAPTA to expose the reality of teacher harassment and terrorization  maintain corruption and mediocrity 
teacherKH@aol.com
EndTeacherAbuse.org
NAPTA- National Association for Prevention of Teacher Abuse
Graduated with honors in 1963 from Oak Park River Forest High School in Oak Park, Illinois, and with honors from the University of Illinois, Champaign where she earned a B.A. in Elementary Education in 1966. She taught elementary school for four years in Berwyn and Hillside, Illinois as well as Phoenix, Arizona, before starting a family. She felt a calling to teach elementary students so that she could share her strength in preparing children to succeed as students and as citizens, goals that she believes require talented teachers to be realized. When teaching jobs were scarce during the 1970's, she worked in business as a sales representative and as a marketing director for an educational film company. However, teaching always was her first love. She eagerly returned to elementary teaching in her forties after earning an M. Ed in Reading at National Louis University in Evanston, Illinois in 1992. She has raised three children and has grandchildren who inspire her to do the work of exposing the truth about Education; she believes that they, as well as all children, deserve better - much better.

David Lyell Marina del Rey, California

davidlyell@gmail.com

He grew up in Palo Alto, California, the youngest of four children to two college professors. David attended public schools before graduating from UC Santa Barbara with a B.A. in English, and The American Film Institute with an M.F.A. in Screenwriting. He likes to work, and has had a variety of jobs along the way. He has done things as varied as ghost-writing a screenplay to washed dishes, working as a food server, dish washer, helper in a warehouse where farm equipment was being liquidated, free-lance reporter and photographer, undercover diner in high-end restaurants, candy vendor at sporting events, proofreader, typist, data entry clerk, and Substitute Teacher. He has 13-years teaching experience with LAUSD and has also worked as an educator in The Palo Alto Unified School District. David is very active in UTLA (United Teachers Los Angeles). In 2010, as part of the March for California's Future, he was one of six core activists to make the 352-mile journey from Bakersfield to Sacramento to protest the lack of funding for education, and essential public services. With California having the 8th largest economy in the world, he believes it is pathetic that we are 46th in the nation in per pupil spending and would like to see more spent for teachers and other educational support professionals. He believes this might be better accomplished if corporations pay their fair share in taxes. David's blog can be viewed at www.davidlyell.blogspot.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY1NCnk_tZI

Susan Ohanian Charlotte, Vermont
susano@gmavt.net
http://www.susanohanian.org
She is a longtime public school teacher who, after 20 years, became staff writer for a teacher magazine and then went freelance. I've maintained a website of activism for nearly 9 years--ever since the passage of NCLB. People can subscribe to the website and then they get updates about new content. I answer all the mail I get through the website and with the answer, people have my e-mail.  I also try to stir things up on Twitter, though I find this medium frustrating. I have a Facebook page--just so people can find me. I don't initiate anything on it, The website keeps me busy.
http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=9593

Susan Lee Schwartz Suffern, New York

Susan studied literacy education, English literature, and fine arts and holds a BA ('63) and MS ('65) from Brooklyn College, and has the equivalent of two master's degrees, earned in graduate studies of literacy, arts and education. She taught literacy skills and art, for four decades in NYC in elementary and secondary school.  In 1998 she won the New York State English Council (NYSEC) Educator of Excellence Award  for her successful teacher practice, studied by Harvard  and the LRDC at the University of Pittsburgh for the New Standards research. At the end of her research, her unique curriculum was selected by the LRDC to be used in their national staff development seminars for school superintendents. She was among six teachers -- from among the thousands across the nation-- observed during the research project, and her teaching practice met all the  principles of learning. In the nineties, she rose to prominence in national educational circles, while teaching at a new magnet school, East Side Middle School. The reading scores of her seventh grade students were at the top of the city, and on the first ELA, which two thirds of city students failed, her former students (then in the eight grade) were TENTH IN THE STATE.

 She writes often about what she learned about the genuine standards for learning, in an attempt to begin a national conversation about the authentic standards, so that there can be genuine reform. Her experience that ended her fine career in the NYC Public Schools has led her to write about the process that removed the top educators, silencing the voices of the classroom practitioners who would not accept anti-learning policies. Her essay here on Perdaily,  is one that describes this process. Read more as she talks about education, literacy  and learning on her site, from the perspective of the experienced teacher-practitioner of pedagogy. She is the voice of dedicated and talented classroom teachers who know why the schools are failing.

Her website is: 

http://www.speakingasateacher.com/Susan_Lee_Schwartz_(Steiner)_/index.html

Joel Shatzky: Brooklyn, New York
Joel.Shatzky@cortland.edu
Professor of English Emeritus--SUNY, College at Cortland (1968-2005)
Adjunct instructor-Kingsborough CC (CUNY) 2006--   )
Regular contributor to the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/searchS/?q=Joel+Shatzky
Author of "The Thinking Crisis" with Ellen Hill (Authors Choice Press: New York, 2001)
Numerous articles on education in Jewish Currents.
Script-writer for three YouTube satires on educational "reform."
 "The Lessons": www.youtube.com/watch?v=D712J1V2Jsg&feature=player_embedded
"Numbers Lie": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57BRNLviVTQ
"The Charter Starters": www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnrrw5CV3Gw<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnrrw5CV3Gw>

Here's Joel's latest post about the low percentage of "college ready" high school graduates. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-shatzky/educating-for-democracy-t_2_b_821410.html

Lorna Stremcha Havre, Montana
<lornastremcha@yahoo.com>
http://www.endteacherabuse.org/Stremcha.html
http://twitter.com/lornapstremcha

lornastremcha.com

callmescarlet.blogspot.com

facebook

HER STORY:
"I know first hand the financial, personal, emotional and physical damage that can result when school administrators, the Montana Education Association and the National Education Association put their own interests above the students, teachers and the taxpayers of the State of Montana My files contain mountains of paperwork including depositions, declarations of truth, notarized documents and exhibits resulting from an arduous legal process that finally ended when the Havre (Montana) School District settled two lawsuits - a Federal suit and one filed in State District Court. These documents also include a letter from a union representative stating, " This is nothing more than a witch hunt." Yet the union continued to allow the school administration to harass, bully and bring harm to me.
These two lawsuits resulted from a single incident that, had it been handled differently and under the light of public scrutiny, would not have snowballed into awards of more than $200,000 worth of damages. Funds that eventually came from the taxpayers' pockets. Ironically, as a taxpayer in Hill County, my family and I are helping to pay for the damages awarded to me. This covered the attorneys' fees. The settlement did not include my attorney fees, however the district, insurance and taxpayers paid the defendants attorney bills, which exceeded mine. The settlement was made on March 2, 2006."

Sabrina Stevens Shupe Denver, Colorado
TeacherSabrinaFSP@gmail.com
"I went into teaching because I (mistakenly) believed the hype about bad teachers in our worst-performing schools, and I wanted to Be the change I wished to see in the world. When I was rushed to the hospital after fainting from exhaustion in my classroom, I started to suspect that the situation might be more complicated than the conventional wisdom on education reform would have us believe."
Excellent Colorado teacher who was forced out of the profession for being a dedicated and conscientious teacher.
TeacherSabrinaFSP@gmail.com
http://failingschools.wordpress.com
@TeacherSabrina on Twitter

Jim Taylor, Ph.D., Psychology San Francisco, California
email: mailto:jim@drjimtaylor.com
web site: www.drjimtaylor.com
Jim Taylor is an Adjunct Professor at the University of San Francisco. He is the author of three parenting books and speaks regularly to students, parents, and educators around the U.S. He blogs on education issues for psychologytoday.com, huffingtonpost.com, sfgate.com, seattlepi.com, and other web sites around the country, as well as on his own web site.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dr-Jim-Taylor/125893225652http://twitter.com/search?q=DrJimTaylor
http://newpolitics.mayfirst.org/blog/5
Democracy Now
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/3/educators_push_back_against_obamas_business
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Impact of urban school characteristics on teachers' classroom practice
How race, class, and gender mediate academic achievement
Teachers' work and the school as a workplace
Effects of changes in global political economy on teaching, teachers, and schools.