The CEA Blog

The blogosphere has been awash recently with posts about the 25th anniversary of “A Nation At Risk” (ANAR). For the uninitiated, ANAR was a report received by President Ronald Reagan that American schools were lacking compared to other nation’s educational systems. Without reform, the report said, American students would be in a race– for the bottom.

The CEA Blog has been fortunate enough to acquire a slightly used Flux Capacitor and retrofit a union-made car for the trip of a lifetime. We asked a number of edu-bloggers the question “What would the American educational landscape be like today if A Nation At Risk were never released?” and loaned them the time machine. Their trips produced interesting posts; they’ll begin popping up next week.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) recently released “Sizing Up State Standards 2008″, a report that analyzes the content standards written by individual states. Ohio’s K-12 Math and Science standards were ranked as “model” standards, but English and Social Studies weren’t ranked. You can read what AFT wrote about it on their blog, or download (PDF) the whole report.

The Southfield Board of Education in East Lansing, Michigan voted recently to place pink slips in the mailboxes of all of the district’s bus drivers, aides, maintenance workers and custodians– over 350 union jobs in total.

The district isn’t leaving those positions unfilled, however. In the same vote, they decided to privatize those jobs, outsourcing them to two for-profit school service companies.

The Michigan Education Association’s affiliate that represented the employees (SMESPA) presented a package to the board that would have cut costs to the district by approximately $18 million over the three years of the pact and created cost-sharing between the union and the district. Despite this extremely generous offer, the school board still voted 5-2 against the proposal. 

For more information, click here.

Welcome to the Carnival of Education! This is the 167th carnival, and the second time The CEA Blog has hosted this wonderful collection of rantings, musings, quotations, ideas, thoughts, inspirations, realizations and the like. The 168th edition will be hosted by the Education Wonks; email them at owlshome {at} earthlink {dot} net, or use this handy submission form. Yes, for those of you wondering, the picture is a snapshot of our fair city. Without further ado, click on the jump below and…. let’s Carnival!

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Talking about working for economic and social justice is one thing, but the AFL-CIO has a proven track record. They have brought about substantive change that benefits working families. The AFL-CIO has been able to effect change at the local and the state level through grassroots activism and supporting progressive candidates.

Click on the jump below to read more.

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All Children Matter, a Michigan-based pro-charter Political Action Committee (PAC) violated Ohio campaign finance laws by funneling $870,000 to its affiliated PAC in Ohio in 2006 and was assessed a record $5.2 million fine by the bipartisan Ohio Elections Commission in a unanimous ruling publicized yesterday.

White Hat founder and CEO David Brennan contributed $200,000 to the group. Ohio campaign laws limit PAC contributions by individuals and corporations to $10,000 per year, but since the group was raising its money in Virginia where individual and corporate contributions are unlimited, Brennan was able to donate in increments of $50,000 and had no legislatively mandated ceiling on his contributions. White Hat operates the largest number of privately managed charter schools in Ohio, which include the Hope Academy and Life Skills Center chains. 

You can read the full story in the Columbus Dispatch here, or read the recent series of posts by The CEA Blog examining the Ohio Department of Education’s statistics for the Hope Academy and Life Skills Center charter school chains here.