April 20, 2011

Education Roundup: “Socialist” Kindergartners?

Photoillustration by Nick Baumann. Sources: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jectre/544530510/">Jectre</a>/Flickr, <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/courosa/3708151311/sizes/l/in/photostream/">courosa</a>/Flickr, <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevendepolo/3796415185/sizes/z/in/photostream/">stevendepolo</a>/Flickr

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  • Ah, kindergarten, where you learn that sharing is “socialist” and cooperation is…also “socialist.” Mother Jones reporter Tim Murphy examines GOP presidential contender Tim Pawlenty’s controversial education record, which includes selecting an education commissioner for Minnesota who…well, read the rest here.
  • In Los Angeles, it’s illegal for people under the age of 18 to be on the streets while school is in session. To enforce this policy, Los Angeles Police Department has conducted sweeps around schools, detained students for 45 minutes, and given out $250 curfew tickets before letting them go to class. Guess who’s getting cited, Huffington Post reports: “According to LA school police data, none of the more than 13,000 tickets they issued from 2005 to 2009 went to a white student.” Thankfully, advocates from the Community Rights Campaign, Public Counsel, and the ACLU of Southern California prodded LAPD Chief Charlie Beck to issue a new policy that ensures curfew sweeps don’t occur during the first hour of classes and discourages officers from giving a ticket if a student is clearly headed toward school.
  • The private school Bill Gates attended has an average of 16 students per class. But Bill Gates recommends increasing class size in the country’s public schools. The New York Times reports on the discrepancies between what public education reformers recommend for everyone else’s kids and the elite private school education most of them received as children. Example: “If my future were determined by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn’t be here, I guarantee that.” Guess whose wife said that?
  • Remember Mission High student Eman? Mother Jones education reporter Kristina Rizga reports on the impact one Mission High student had on MoJo readers—and vice versa.
  • Michigan’s Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb issued layoff notices to all 5,466 public school teachers in Detroit.
  • Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel selected charter and merit pay proponent Jean-Claude Brizard as the new Chief Executive Officer of Chicago Public Schools. This is to the dismay of 95 percent of teachers who voted “no confidence” in Brizard.
  • Arne Duncan announced that New Hampshire is receiving $1.47 million to convert its lowest performing schools into charters or replace their principals, or close these schools altogether.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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