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Why our schools are broken – and how to fix them

Almost all of what you’ll read in the new, just off the press,  education issue of the Brooklyn-based newspaper, The Indypendent, (“a free newspaper for a free people”) contradicts the narrative of school failure and reform you read and hear in the press and media. To understand the push for charter schools, privatization, and the standardized testing mania, as well as why teacher unions count, read the just-published issue, in paper or online. Warning – it’s a big file that takes a bit to load. But the wait is worth it. 

John Tarleton’s two-page map of the global trajectory of neoliberal reforms is especially helpful in seeing the big picture. And in great to hear parents and students expose inequalities in the NYC schools – and describe how they are being combatted. Stanley Aronowitz’s article rightly reminds us that education has to be about human emancipation. Yes! (Note to  Stanley: The education major was eliminated long-ago. Now the struggle is to have teachers prepared for more than five weeks.)

Here’s hoping that education activists in NYC  get out the word about  this powerful and empowering journalistic project. Many thanks to the Indypendent for this contribution to international resistance to neoliberalism’s destruction of public education.