February 17, 2011

Education Roundup: What’s the Stimulus Doing For Schools?

Majory Collins/Zumapress.com

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  • 2012’s budget proposal is in, and President Obama is pushing for $77.4 billion to go to education, reports The New York Times. The GOP? Not so much. If some conservatives have their way, the Head Start program can wave goodbye to $1.1 billion, meaning services for more than 200,000 children and the jobs of more than 50,000 Head Start employees will get eliminated. What’s the GOP’s rationale for proposing such harsh education cuts? “Throwing more money at our nation’s broken education system ignores reality and does a disservice to students and taxpayers,” Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.) told the NY Times. “Over the last 45 years we have increased our investment in education, but the return on that investment has failed to improve student achievement.”
  • That’s not entirely true. American schools are actually better than they were 50 years ago, writes MoJo’s Kevin Drum, citing scores in a recent report by the Brookings Institute. Sure, when compared to kids in other advanced countries, US students aren’t exactly making the international honor roll, but they’re still beating the country’s personal average in the First International Mathematics Study. That’s a boost, right?
  • Via Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss, veteran teachers laid out their problems with Teach for America’s focus on test scores and two-year teaching commitments, prompting educator Nancy Flanagan to ask why teachers who choose to work in classrooms for the long haul don’t receive the same amount of recruitment, training, and on-site support as TFA.
  • Last but not least, parents in Mansfield, Texas made news by pushing their school district to turn down (indefinitely) a $1.3 billion federal grant that would have provided an Arabic language course in schools. MoJo’s Tim Murphy covers the reasoning behind the hysteria, while Texas Insider‘s Dan Flynn writes the course will “sensitize” children to a different culture.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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