Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

The first three paragraphs of Nick French’s Jacobin article provides a good overview of the national pushback that is underway:

Wherever there’s a battle over public education lately, a billionaire is somehow involved. Los Angeles, Newark, the “education reform” project as a whole — the ultrarich always have their hands in efforts to antagonize teachers.

One city they’ve now set their sights on: Oakland, where teachers are in the middle of union contract negotiations and just authorized a strike. Some teachers stayed out of school in one-day wildcat strikes in December and January, joined by many of their students. According to posts circulating on Facebook and Instagram, Oakland students have planned to call out sick in solidarity with teachers today.

Just like other teachers’ union battles these days, the contract fight pits students and working people against billionaire pro-corporate school reformers and the politicians backing them.

Slowly but surely the word seems to be getting out…. privatization is corroding public education and undermining the kind of instruction that teachers provide to children. MAYBE one of the political parties will realize that their “bi-partisan” support for the test-and-punish “reform” beloved of the billionaires and privatizers is hurting children, demoralizing teachers, and diminishing middle class jobs.