My comment was posted on the NYTimes website (it's #64) - along with a slew of racist posts which seek to reinforce prejudice and in some cases outright bigotry. The fact that the article produced such responses reinforces my doubts about the effect that any such account will produce.

I didn't comment on the problems with the article that i mentioned in my previous post - but with the overall sense of impotence that the author was transmitting.

It’s true that AS TEACHERS the impact that we can have on the lives of the children in our care is limited.
But we are also CITIZENS of this country, and we have a role to play in CHANGING THE POLICIES that create daily tragedies that young people face.

It is not a law of nature that capital/industry is allowed to be free, and thus forces communities to compete against each other to see who can work for less, with fewer guarantees. Our great cities once were centers of industry, and thanks to the many who struggled in the labor movement those jobs could allow a family to survive.

It is not a law of nature that essentially the only form of ‘assistance’ that the federal government is willing to provide to our youth is to enroll them in the armed forces, so that they can be sent to kill other black and brown children in other countries, for the benefit of corporate pirates and the imperial designs of the white house.

It is not a law of nature that schools and teachers lack the training, suppliues, and support they need to implement quality extended-day programsto reach all children, while tens of billions are spent on corporate welfare disguised as ‘defense contracts.’

As citizens, we have a role to play in changing these things - and the need to change them is urgent. There are lives in the balance.

Su repubblica ho letto di questo "assalto" alle iscrizioni per la SSIS - le domande sono di gran lunga superiori al numero di posizioni disponibili - anche se non viene specificato il numero di iscritti per la matematica...

Ho due commenti da fare.

Il primo: ho il sospetto che questo "assalto" sia dovuto in (larga?) parte alla precarieta' che c'e' in tutti gli impieghi.

Il secondo: i ragazzi della scuola di Barbiana ci hanno insegnato molto riguardo agli "oneri" associati al ruolo di insegnante di scuola pubblica in italia. Diciamo semplicemente che c'e' una bella differenza tra chi insegna e chi lavora in fabbrica, o nei campi...

Malpagati, in calo nella scala della considerazione sociale, chiamati in causa in prima persona in vicende che mostrano solo il lato oscuro della scuola. Eppure il mestiere dell'insegnante sembra ritrovare nuovo appeal tra i giovani laureati
O, almeno, a guadare i dati sembra sia così: una vera corsa alla cattedra. Quest'anno, il numero di coloro che desiderano insegnare in una scuola media o superiore è di gran lunga maggiore ai posti messi a disposizione dal ministero dell'Università. Un fenomeno che assomiglia tanto alla "lotta" per conquistare un posto nelle facoltà a numero chiuso, come Medicina e Architettura.

I numeri sono ancora provvisori ma l'incremento di richieste rispetto allo scorso anno si aggira attorno al 15/20 per cento. Notizia sorprendente e in contgrotendenza. Che già solleva una prima preoccupazione: se infatti tutti aspiranti professori dovessero riuscire nell'intento le graduatorie dei supplenti non si esaurirebbero mai.

Secondo i primi dati forniti dal giornale on line "La Tecnica della scuola", a fronte di 820 posti disponibili nelle Ssis (le Scuole di specializzazione per l'insegnamento secondario), in Toscana agli scritti si sono presentati in 2.895. Le cose non cambiano se ci si sposta a Milano, dove il numero di chi desidera sedersi dietro una cattedra è due volte e mezzo superiore alle disponibilità.

The information below comed from Education Week:

Teachers in the United States spend more hours at work than their counterparts in 29 other countries, but are among the lowest paid, according to an annual survey comparing the education systems in some of the world’s leading economies.

The report, released Sept. 18 by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, says that primary-level teachers teach an average of 1,080 hours each year in the United States—well above the average of 803 hours for all countries surveyed.

The average salary of just over $40,000 for a U.S. primary teacher with 15 years of experience ranked the United States 12th among the countries surveyed. In Luxembourg, the average salary for a teacher with similar experience was $88,000 in U.S. dollars. In Hungary, it was $16,000.

Although the average U.S. teacher salary is above the OECD average of $37,603, the report points out that relative to the gross domestic product, “per capita teachers’ pay in the United States is among the lowest in OECD countries.”

The report ranked the United States 10th for its efforts to control class sizes, with 23.1 students per classroom at the primary level, higher than the OECD average of 21.5.

Of course, these are AVERAGES, which say a lot by saying little about the internal differences between schools in the 'burbs and schools in the cities, for example. But still worth noting. Oh, before I forget:

So, there was a washington state math convention. The State Superintendent spoke, and said some things. The Seattle Times article included this snippet:

That buzz comes, in part, on the heels of a review of Washington's standards for mathematics that found them sorely lacking, especially when it comes to the basics. The report echoed concerns expressed by parent groups such as "Where's the Math?" which have criticized math curricula taught in local school districts, including Bellevue and Lake Washington.

This "review", i presume, is the one published by the pro-privatization (i.e. pro voucher) group "the Fordham Foundation."

So, I wrote back. these were my comments:

I was baffled by Ms. Tuinstra's unqualified remark about a "review of Washington's standards for mathematics that found them sorely lacking, especially when it comes to the basics."

Should all of the state's children undergo a rigorous, rich, and engaging math education? of course. Are Washington State's standards "lacking" in that regard? Perhaps.

But if the standards are "sorely lacking," why do our children in grades 4 and 8 score above the national average on the National Assessment of Education Progress, "the only nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America's students know?"

Does it have anything to do with the fact that the organization that conducted this "review" - the Fordham Foundation - supports the privatization of public schools (through so-called "vouchers")?

Ms Tuinstra does her readers a disservice by not addressing these issues.

Oh, i guess i haven't said this in a while:

From the Times:

The Pentagon has paid more than $100 million in bonuses to veteran Green Berets and Navy SEALs, reversing the flow of top commandos to the corporate world where security companies such as Blackwater USA are offering big salaries.

The retention effort, started nearly three years ago and overseen by U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., has helped preserve a small but elite group of enlisted troops with vast experience fighting the unconventional wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Defense Department statistics.

Should i mention that there is NO such program in place for teachersor doctors in high-need urban and rural areas?

This is a response to some right-wing talk-radio host's editorial in the Kent Reporter.

Re: "School Math isn't adding up", by John Carlson, published in the September 5th edition

John Carlson would have us believe that that the "reform math" curriculum is the CAUSE of the appalling number of students not proficient on the WASL, without offering any evidence or argument.

He quotes the Fordham Institute, whose main policy objective seems to be  a push for the privatization of our public schools through "vouchers". But he omits that the percentage of students who are proficient on the 10th grade WASL has been slowly and steadily increasing in almost every year on record. Nor does he tell us that Washington has consistently scored above the national average in the National Assessment of Education Progress - the only uniform, national measure of student achievement.

I take no position on the controversy over curriculum. It seems to me that there are other, constructive ways to help our children learn: reinforcing the math training of elementary school teachers, in both content and pedagogy; aggressively recruiting people who are knowledgeable about math to teach; providing additional resources for students who lack academic support at home; strengthening and expanding after school programs, etc.

Lack of numeracy is indeed an urgent pressing problem for our youth and society, but why should we trust the soution suggested by someone who either hasn’t done their homework or is intentionally painting a misleading picture?

Matteo Tamburini

another great piecce about education, this time in the Times

Schools Fight for Teachers Because of High Turnover

GREENSBORO, N.C. — The retirement of thousands of baby boomer teachers coupled with the departure of younger teachers frustrated by the stress of working in low-performing schools is fueling a crisis in teacher turnover that is costing school districts substantial amounts of money as they scramble to fill their ranks for the fall term.

Superintendents and recruiters across the nation say the challenge of putting a qualified teacher in every classroom is heightened in subjects like math and science and is a particular struggle in high-poverty schools, where the turnover is highest. Thousands of classes in such schools have opened with substitute teachers in recent years.

Here in Guilford County, N.C., turnover had become so severe in some high-poverty schools that principals were hiring new teachers for nearly every class, every term. To staff its neediest schools before classes start on Aug. 28, recruiters have been advertising nationwide, organizing teacher fairs and offering one of the nation’s largest recruitment bonuses, $10,000 to instructors who sign up to teach Algebra I.

“We had schools where we didn’t have a single certified math teacher,” said Terry Grier, the schools superintendent. “We needed an incentive, because we couldn’t convince teachers to go to these schools without one.”

Guilford County, which has 116 schools, is far from the only district to take this route as school systems compete to fill their ranks. Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a nonprofit policy group that seeks to encourage better teaching, said hundreds of districts were offering recruitment incentives this summer.

Officials in New York, which has the nation’s largest school system, said they had recruited about 5,000 new teachers by mid-August, attracting those certified in math, science and special education with a housing incentive that can include $5,000 for a down payment.

New York also offers subsidies through its teaching fellows program, which recruits midcareer professionals from fields like health care, law and finance. The money helps defer the cost of study for a master’s degree. The city expects to hire at least 1,300 additional teachers before school begins on Sept. 4, said Vicki Bernstein, director of teacher recruitment.

Los Angeles has offered teachers signing with low-performing schools a $5,000 bonus. The district, the second-largest in the country, had hired only about 500 of the 2,500 teachers it needed by Aug. 15 but hoped to begin classes fully staffed, said Deborah Ignagni, chief of teacher recruitment.

In Kansas, Alexa Posny, the state’s education commissioner, said the schools had been working to fill “the largest number of vacancies” the state had ever faced. This is partly because of baby boomer retirements and partly because districts in Texas and elsewhere were offering recruitment bonuses and housing allowances, luring Kansas teachers away.

“This is an acute problem that is becoming a crisis,” Ms. Posny said.

In June, the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, a nonprofit group that seeks to increase the retention of quality teachers, estimated from a survey of several districts that teacher turnover was costing the nation’s districts some $7 billion annually for recruiting, hiring and training.

Demographers agree that education is one of the fields hardest hit by the departure of hundreds of thousands of baby boomers from the work force, particularly because a slowdown in hiring in the 1980s and 1990s raised the average age of the teaching profession. Still, they debate how serious the attrition will turn out to be.

In New York, the wave of such retirements crested in the early years of this decade as teachers left well before they hit their 60s, without a disruptive teacher shortage, Ms. Bernstein said.

In other parts of the country, the retirement bulge is still approaching, because pension policies vary among states, said Michael Podgursky, an economist at the University of Missouri. California is projecting that it will need 100,000 new teachers over the next decade from the retirement of the baby boomers alone.

Some educators say it is the confluence of such retirements with the departure of disillusioned young teachers that is creating the challenge. In addition, higher salaries in the business world and more opportunities for women are drawing away from the field recruits who might in another era have proved to be talented teachers with strong academic backgrounds.

“The problem is not mainly with retirement,” said Thomas G. Carroll, the president of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. “Our teacher preparation system can accommodate the retirement rate. The problem is that our schools are like a bucket with holes in the bottom, and we keep pouring in teachers.”

The commission has calculated that these days nearly a third of all new teachers leave the profession after just three years, and that after five years almost half are gone — a higher turnover rate than in the past.

All the coming and going of young teachers is tremendously disruptive, especially to schools in poor neighborhoods where teacher turnover is highest and students’ needs are greatest.

According to the most recent Department of Education statistics available, about 269,000 of the nation’s 3.2 million public school teachers, or 8.4 percent, quit the field in the 2003-4 school year. Thirty percent of them retired, and 56 percent said they left to pursue another career or because they were dissatisfied.

The federal No Child Left Behind law requires schools and districts to put a qualified teacher in every classroom. The law has led districts to focus more seriously on staffing its low-performing schools, educators said, but it does not appear to have helped persuade veteran teachers to continue their service in them.

Tim Daly, president of the New Teacher Project, a group that helps urban districts recruit teachers, said attrition often resulted from chaotic hiring practices, because novice teachers are often assigned at the last moment to positions for which they have not even interviewed. Later, overwhelmed by classroom stress, many leave the field.

Chicago and New York are districts that have invested heavily and worked with teachers unions in recent years to improve hiring and transfer policies, Mr. Daly said.

“But most of the urban districts have no coherent hiring strategy,” he said. Many receive thousands of teacher applications in the spring but leave them unprocessed until principals return from August vacations, when more organized suburban districts have already hired the most-qualified teachers, he said.

“There isn’t any maliciousness in this,” Mr. Daly said, “it’s just a conspiracy of dysfunction.”

In Guilford County, Washington Elementary School, which serves students from a housing project, had churned through several principals and most of its teachers several years ago, and had repeatedly failed to make federal testing goals, said Dr. Grier, the superintendent.

“Teachers were worried it was becoming a failing school,” Dr. Grier said. To rebuild morale, he recruited a principal from Chicago, Grenita Lathan. Her first year at Washington was a nightmare, Ms. Lathan said, because her predecessors had been so panicked to fill classroom vacancies that they had hired “just anybody.”

“All they wanted was warm bodies in the classroom,” she said. At job fairs, qualified teachers she tried to hire shunned her, she said.

Under Guilford County’s incentive program, math or reading teachers who sign on at any of 29 high-poverty schools receive bonuses of $2,500 to $10,000. They can earn additional bonuses if they raise achievement.

Those incentives helped Ms. Lathan recruit solid teachers last year, she said, and after much tutoring and hard work, students met federal testing targets. This summer all but one teacher signed up for another year.

Other Guilford County schools have also used the incentives to hire promising people.

Rebecca Rheinheimer moved from Indiana this summer, attracted by a $2,500 bonus to teach at Oak Hill Elementary, where the teaching staff has been strengthened by the use of such bonuses. The school, in High Point, met its federal testing targets this spring for the first time in several years.

Margaret Eaddy-Busch, a veteran math teacher, moved from Philadelphia this summer to teach at Dudley High, which had become known as a hard-to-staff school. She will receive a $10,000 bonus for teaching Algebra I.

“If I survived in Philly for 10 years,” Ms. Eaddy-Busch said, “I’ll do just fine here.”

But it remains unclear whether the incentive program will retain good teachers as effectively as it attracts them.

“It’s challenging to teach in these high-needs schools,” said Mark Jewell, president of the local teachers union. “These new teachers will have a trial by fire, and then it’ll be a revolving door.”

This was in the Tuesday, August 21st edition of the Seattle PI

Students are casualties of math wars

GINGER MACDONALD
GUEST COLUMNIST

Since i started teaching again i haven't had much time to write. But i felt that i should mention that last saturday i went to see Bob Moses speak in Brooklyn. Bob Moses is one of my heros - and his recent focus has been math edcuation for disenfranchised youth.

The work of the Algebra Project can be found here.

Grazie a Veronica per avermi inviato quanto segue... La situazione descritta qui sotto esiste negli stati uniti gia' da vari anni.

Prof stranieri per i nostri figli? Da quanto emerge dall'ultima fatica del ministero della Pubblica istruzione, in materia di precari della scuola, sembrerebbe proprio inevitabile. Coloro che si propongono di insegnare materie scientifiche a scuola sono relativamente pochi rispetto al fabbisogno. E, fra pochi anni, quindi, gli studenti italiani potrebbero avere in cattedra insegnanti cinesi o polacchi. Dovranno mettersi l'anima in pace coloro che rifiutano quella che e' ormai una la realta': la scuola italiana e' gia' multietnica e lo sara' sempre di piu'.

Il dossier dal titolo 'Osservatorio sulle graduatorie permanenti 2006: profilo degli iscritti e distribuzione geografica', pubblicato qualche giorno fa da viale Trastevere, mette in luce la carenza di insegnanti di materie scientifiche, sia alla media sia al superiore. In  diversi passaggi del volume viene sottolineata quello che al momento appare solo come un campanello d'allarme, ma che potrebbe diventare una vera e propria emergenza, se non affrontata per tempo. "Una situazione che configura una relativa penuria dell'offerta rispetto al fabbisogno", si legge. Basta analizzare con attenzione i dati sugli iscritti nelle graduatorie permanenti (dalle quali viene reclutata meta' degli neo assunti) del 2006, trasformate dal governo Prodi in graduatorie ad esaurimento, per comprenderne il perche'.

Nella scuola media, a fronte di un organico che prevede il 17 per cento di docenti di Matematica, gli iscritti nelle liste dei supplenti e' pari all'11 per cento. Carenza confermata anche dai cosiddetti flussi in uscita, i pensionamenti. Negli ultimi quattro anni, su 100 docenti che hanno deciso di lasciare la cattedra 16 insegnavano Matematica. In altre parole, se gli iscritti nelle graduatorie di Matematica alla media sono poco piu' di 8 mila e i pensionamenti viaggiano al ritmo di 1.600 l'anno in poco piu' di 5 anni le liste verrebbero esaurite. E dopo? Sara' compito di coloro che attualmente studiano nelle Ssis (le scuole di specializzazione per l'insegnamento secondario) di colmare il fabbisogno degli anni successivi, ma le scuole di specializzazione sono a numero chiuso.

Stesso discorso per la scuola superiore. I 14 mila in lista per insegnare per Matematica, Fisica, Informatica e materie tecniche, a fronte di 1.900 pensionamenti l'anno e di un conseguente richiesta (fra assunzioni a tempo indeterminato e supplenze) che si attesta sulle 12 mila e 500 unita', potrebbero esaurirsi nel giro di sette anni. "Le tendenze delineate confermano - spiegano i tecnici del ministero – la possibilita' che, ferme restando altre condizioni, in futuro si profili una scarsita' relativa di candidati interessati all'insegnamento" di materie scientifiche. La situazione a livello nazionale non e' affatto uniforme e in alcune province italiane questa emergenza potrebbe manifestarsi prima. 

When you travel with the school, the hotels they put you up in usually give you a daily newspaper - which allows you to see a slightly different perspective within the bounds of orthodoxy.

Sometimes, you get really interesting stuff, like this article in USA Today:

Army pays $1B to recruit, retain soldiers

Bear in mind, this is ONLY the Army. it doesn't include the Navy, Air Force, Marines, or the Reserves. Try to guess how much is spent annually to recruit and retain teachers, to get a sense for our national priorities.

There's an organization, the "center for union facts" - which won't disclose where it gets its' money - which has made it its mission to attack and discredit the Newark Teacher's Union (NTU). There is little doubt in my mind that they are bankrolled by right-wing foundations.

I have previously discussed the waste of NTU members' money represented by the "stop the killings in Newark now" billboards (which ought to have said: tell your senators: money for health care and education, not war and occupation), but the center for union facts has turned this billboard campaign as proof that the NTU is responsible for all of the failures of the Newark Public Schools (NPS).

The main hack at the Center for Union Facts has written an editorial in the Asbury Park Press expounding this anti-union BS.

The main claim of the article could be summed up as this: Teachers unions are notorious for preventing tenured teachers from being fired, no matter how bad their performances. And in Newark, the size of this problem is astonishing.

Which was immediately and authoritatively refuted by Marion Bolden - the NPS Superintendent. She said in the Star-Ledger: “Have I ever taken an opposing position with the Union, there is no question yes, we go to arbitration, but when a teacher is overwhelmingly incompetent they don’t support them”

So the main claim collapses upon any minimal inspection - not surprising, given the level of intellectual discourse about unions on the right. But there is more: the NTU is also guilty of other crimes:

Do “the people” of Newark want good schools? you bet. Do they want Cory’s vision for education? That’s a bit more of a shaky claim to make…

But some people would rather attack reform with billboards than offer to make any real change.

It’s not clear to me that NTU was attacking “reform”. They are clearly attacking Booker – who supports vouchers, and mayoral control over the schools. Are those the "reforms" that the NTU opposes? then they're doing the right thing! are they going about it in the worst possible way? Yes. But to paint it as an attack on "reform" is deceiving and a ridiculous pro-voucher ploy.

No one is more invested in keeping things the way they are than the Newark teachers union. Last year, mayoral candidate Ronald Rice launched his campaign from union headquarters. More recently the union rented the now-infamous billboards attacking Rice's victorious opponent, reform-minded Mayor Cory Booker.

In terms of education, it’s unclear to me exactly how Booker plans to “fix” the schools. it sounds like he wants vouchers and mayoral control of the schools. But both are politically volatile, and there’s NO evidence to show that they work, so this right-wing hack just says the more palatable and positive-sounding “reform”.

Any REAL effort to fix the schools (in Bob Moses' terminology) would focus on a massive political effort to redirect substantive resources to the education system, particularly to the recruitment and training of teachers.

Math teachers, particularly in the high school, are in VERY short supply, and elementary school teachers too often do not have the training in math that they would need to get their children where they need to be.

This ought to be the crux of the argument. Fine, let's remove the NTU and allow the adminstrators to fire as many teachers as they want. Where are the replacements going to come from? Is it going to be more likely that there will be a steady stream of qualified, experienced teachers committed to social justice applying to work in the NPS if they will have weaker protection from arbitrary administrators, and less pay - as would inevitably be the case without a vigorous union defending its members?

The center for union facts is less about "informing union members" about their leadership and more about dismantling any kind of public infrastructure to the detriment of the poor

Yesterday I helped out and attended the "People's Rally for Peace and Justice" sponsored by the Peace and Justice coalition, with much of the work done by the People's Organization for Progress.

A lot of speeches were made. Too many, I felt at the time. But I wonder.

Many of the points that were made were right on target. The waste of resources represented by the current war in Iraq was appropriately attacked, and the point was made repeatedly that those resources are - desperately - needed here, in Newark. Some of the speakers gave examples of just what could be accomplished with the billions of dollars spent in Iraq, in terms of housing, education, and health care.

The war was appropriately assailed as immoral, and illegal, on all parts.

We heard from veterans, and from one man whose son was killed in action. As Larry Hamm - the MC - pointed out, those were the domestic groups most affected by the barbarity in Iraq. Perhaps an Iraqi perspective would have been appropriate. There were speeches from Labor, from elected officials, from the first African-American woman president of the New Jersey Chapter of the National Organization for Women, from Ministers of both large African American churches and the Nation of Islam. More women spoke at the Rally than did at the Conference - a welcome development.

I quickly grew impatient with all the speeches. "Yes, I know all of these things," I thought. Now let's be constructive and talk about ACTIONS. The Occupation Project (a courageous, creative idea) was briefly mentioned towards the end of the event. People agreed to march. But I felt impatient, restless. When I read Stokeley Carmichael's autobiography (Ready For Revolution) or Howard Zinn's accounts (in SNCC: the New Abolitionists) of what people in the Civil Rights movement were doing to end US Apartheid, they were getting trained for non-violent resistance, they were having heated debates, and they were putting their bodies on the line - they didn't sit around and listen to people talk for hours on end. I wanted to say something about tax resistance, and my own efforts, limited though they may be, at civil disobedience with the federal excise tax in my phone bill.

But - and this is still slowly sinking in - I began to realize was that what was happening was something different. There was a delicate dance being conducted by the member organizations. And the point of the dance was to see whether they could all be together in the same room and agree on something - namely, in Martin Luther King's words, that

we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

And I realize that perhaps the focal point of this rally was less to mobilize the masses, and more to continue on the tentative path that the coalition set out on after the Peace Conference in January. And that my impatience with the proceedings is misplaced: what I was witnessing was the complicated and lengthy birth of a strange new creature. A still tentative alliance of African-American religious organizations, Labor, college students, and traditional "peace activists" which could - potentially - target the nexus of domestic corporate power and imperialism, with the aim of creating a more just society. This is the stuff that must give Dick Cheney nightmares.

So the role of anyone who was there was not to immediately become a foot-soldier in a wave of mass action, but rather to indicate to those who were on the podium, and to everyone else in the room that this is important. That we support their and our efforts to figure it out, and work as a coalition. That whatever differences may divide us (or divide our "leaders"),  we AS A PEOPLE think that this is important enough to set those differences aside.

Will it work? It's hard to say. But it seems clear that at SOME point these changes will have to occur, if the coalition is going to be sustainable, sustained, and ultimately effective:

• shift the focus away from this or that particular war and pinpoint the military budget and the whole military-industrial complex. Individual wars end (and the war in Iraq may end soon, hopefully). The Pentagon goes on.
• Think more broadly about our permanent war economy, as represented by the empire of US military installations around the world - which are being resisted from Ecuador, to Italy, to Japan.
• Move to engage the masses of people. The organizations in the coalition who do not mobilize in the street will have to start doing so. The "white, middle class" peace movement will have to challenge itself to incorporate more fully the domestic repercussions of a war economy, so as to become meaningful to the poor, the homeless, and the chronically undermeployed. All will have to be more visible, foster organization at all levels of society, and promote a culture of resistance.
• Somehow engage the youth of the cities in the struggle, and make them a focus of the "revolution of values."  Gangs, for example, represent a tremendous potential source of organization and energy. Schools at all levels are teeming with children who are just yearning for a framework to make sense of their world, and the natural rebelliousness of youth, properly channelled, could be a fantastic source of energy.

...Writing about this helps me reflect about what happened on Saturday, and it sharpens my focus on what I need to do. What should my role be in all this? If you got this far, anonymous reader, hopefully you are doing the same.

Ho letto questo articolo sulla Repubblica sul calo relativo della spesa statale sulla scuola pubblica e sulle universita'.

Per farmi un'idea, sono andato a cercare il budget del ministero della difesa, che e' di oltre 20 miliardi di euro.

Ma non sono riuscito a trovare il bilancio del ministero della pubblica istruzione. Qualcuno mi sa aiutare?

I can think of other wasteful programs which ought to get the ax.

Oh, and remember to support H.R. 676 - The bill to create universal, single payer health care introduced by John Conyers.

Cal Thomas gets it exactly right when he says that Bush's budget contains too much entitlement money directed towards "people who believe they are owed something from the sweat of another's brow."

People like the shareholders and executives at Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney, who reap millions of dollars in profits at taxpayer expense by selling weapons systems designed to fight the Cold War (such as the F-22) to an all-too willing audience in the Pentagon.

In fact, when Thomas described his pleasure at the expected savings to be had by "eliminating outdated and unneeded government programs" I though he was referring to the $10 billion that could be saved next year just by eliminating 'Space-Based and Missile Defense Capabilities' from the DoD's request - surely 'outdated and unneeded' when people with box cutters are the biggest threat to our security.

President Bush released the administration's budget. I wrote a proposal for an op-ed to the Star Ledger, so i'll wait to post it for a week, to see if they pick it up (i doubt it). In the meanwhile, i wrote three letters to the Times - with no reply. I may stop writing to the Times, and focus on the Ledger.

Letter I

If, as your newspaper suggests, the democrats are 'not especially eager' to cut back military spending and roll back President Bush's tax cuts (despite President Bush's record low approval ratings, and an electoral mandate to change direction in Washington), it must also means that they are 'not especially
eager' to remain the dominant party in congress - let alone be the party that wins the Presidency.

Letter II

Re: "Advanced Placement Tests Are Leaving Some Behind"

I teach math in an inner city high school in Newark, NJ. Our school offers an AP calculus class, but in any given school year at most five students have had the background to take it.

Yet the President's DOE budget would allocate $120 million to train more AP teachers (up from $30 million in 2007) - filling a non-existing 'need'.

In fairness, it's true that the budget also calls for an additional $250 million to be spent  on improving math and science instruction in elementary and middle school - a real necessity; it's a pity that it amounts to less than $8 per student.

It is even more of a pity when I compare the spending on math preparation with the $9 billion to be spent on National Missile Defense - i can't help but wonder about our priorities.

 Letter III

Re: "Federal law drains resources for the gifted"

Do we truly live "in a world of scarce resources"?

If so, why are is there a request for $481.4 billion in the FY2008 DoD budget - an increase of $42 billion over last year?

This figure also does not reflect the additional $235.1 billion requested to continue to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The truth of the matter is that when our elected officials decide their priorities, students (whether gifted or struggling) take a very remote back seat to the ever-expanding military industrial complex.

The Newark Teachers' Union was one of the only major supporters of Cory Booker's main opponent in the race for Mayor - current state senator Ron Rice. Their stance was perhaps undestandable given Booker's outspoken support for Vouchers. Recently, they have paid lots of money to put up billboards next to the main access points to Newark that say "HELP WANTED" and underneath say something about the number of murders in the city.

The official justification is the perceived need for help with retention of new teachers (people are afraid to live here and work here), but this strikes me as being so much Bull. People don't leave the system because they are afraid of violence, but because they are overwhelmed by the impossible task they are confronted with - and given that they have other options, they take them. And why would these signs only crop up now, since the city has been under siege for years?

I have read some comments suggesting that the union should protest the questionable spending by the Newark Public Schools. Some of the items:

In "desk reviews" of a random sample of purchase orders, auditors said there wasn't enough documentation to know if spending was reasonable for $13 million in Camden, $10 million in Paterson, $558,000 in Jersey City and $446,000 in Newark.

Newark has the highest budget of the three, and yet came up with the lowest amount. Still unacceptable, but let's put things in perspective.

Newark also spent $310,000 in payroll to 28 dead employees.

Truly unacceptable

$29,995 for Newark Schools Superintendent Marion Bolden's 2005 Grand Cherokee Jeep, a 4-by-4 with leather interior and navigation screen. The district responded it was provided according to the state-appointed superintendent's contract.

THIS is BS journalism at its best/worst. IS IT PART OF HER CONTRACT OR NOT??? Something like this is verifiable, it doen't need to be left as "they said" "they responded."

$1,795 for a jukebox purchased in Newark by Bolden, who responded it was bought from a vendor who didn't accept purchase orders.

My understanding is that this was for the Mic it Up nights at Harold Wilson - a commendable, great  program of performances by students (though it may be a questionable use of public money).

But this is also missing the point: THERE IS NO BIGGER WASTE OF MONEY IN THIS COUNTRY THAN THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX (at least as far as working people are concerned).

the only sign that a Union ought to be putting up is this one:

On Monday, January 15th, i marched with the People's Organization for Progress (POP) in memory of Martin Luther King. It was amazing to me that on that day (of all days) the police were making a fuss about allowing us to mrch in the streets of Downtown Newark. In Seattle (a city with a MUCH smaller percentage of people of African descent) the MLK day march is an institution that Washington State senators attend. In Newark, no elected official was present.

Then on Saturday January 20th I attended the People's Peace Conference at Rutgers Law School (the muscle behind the event was also mostly from POP). A wonderful event, whose main theme was the appropriate one: The consequences of the war in our community.

The spirit of all these events that now motivates me can be found in the powerful speech in which Martin Luther King declared that he would begin to actively campaign against the war in Vietnam. But his speech is entitled Beyond Vietnam. The reason he made abundantly clear himself:

Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.