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Abandoned Detroit Public Schools "People tend to have a visceral reaction to the sight of books piled ten feet high and left to rot in a windowless warehouse or strewn about a classroom floor. They seem to have more sympathy for books than for the children who’ll never have the chance to use them. Half of Detroiters cannot even read. Unemployment is above 20 percent and our streets are filled with hopeless people. When I see schools left like this, I know exactly what waits for many of these kids. I see it every day on the streets." [more inside]
posted by mippy on Jun 6, 2010 - 75 comments

"The thing that kills me about education is that it's so touchy-feely...if the children don't know how to read, I don't care how creative you are. You're not doing your job". Michelle Rhee is polarizing, inexperienced, abrasive, and young - and with urban school systems all over the country watching, she is trying to rebuild DC's famously troubled public school system (link to full series). [more inside]
posted by peachfuzz on Dec 1, 2008 - 107 comments

American public schools can be pretty evil sometimes. However, children can be evil too.
posted by tehloki on Apr 3, 2008 - 35 comments

The WSJ's Charles Murray on the problem with public education: not inequality, overcrowding or standardized tests, but kids just aren't smart enough. First in a three-part series.
posted by Lisa S on Jan 16, 2007 - 203 comments

"But What About Us? Student Photographs from the Corridor of Shame" is a traveling photography exhibit that follows up on “Corridor of Shame: the neglect of South Carolina's rural schools" [wmv], a 58 minute documentary that tells the story of the challenges faced in funding an adequate education in South Carolina's rural school districts. The documentary tracks the evidence presented on behalf of eight school districts in Abbeville County School District v. The State of South Carolina [pdf]. The exhibit is a powerful demonstration to the needs still unmet in South Carolina's rural schools. Only five pictures and captions are on the website now, but most of the pictures appear inside with permission from the copyright holder.
posted by ND¢ on May 10, 2006 - 28 comments

What "No Child Left Behind" Really Means
"There, buried deep within the law's 670 pages, is a provision requiring public secondary schools to provide military recruiters not only with access to facilities, but also with contact information for every student -- or face a cutoff of all federal aid."

Read that again slowly, No Child Left Behind is actually a military recruitment program. Backed up with an inverse extortion threat.
via.
posted by fenriq on Dec 1, 2004 - 72 comments

Focus Concern on Schools in Six States I had recenbtly read that when alerts are issued, Bush support moves up. Now we have this alert based on info from a captured terrorist in Iraq. Our govt, we are told, downloaded building plans for a number of public schools. Alas: the material according to the article was found in the Summer--School begins around Labor Day...and now the alert is made?
posted by Postroad on Oct 7, 2004 - 19 comments

Southern public schools are becoming segregated again, but not through governmental regulation this time, but through the free will of white teachers who are fleeing all black schools, and relaxed bussing laws that are no longer forcing mixed race students to intermingle. A disturbing step backwards, and one that doesn't trend better in the foreseeable future.
posted by jonson on Jan 12, 2003 - 41 comments

Is there any hope for our public schools? Despite the HUGE influx of spending students in this district do worse every year. teachers have been saying it all along. Without parental support there is only so much a school can do. Very depressing.
posted by keithl on May 18, 2001 - 11 comments

Oklahoma House passes bill requiring reference to creationism in texts.

"the committee shall ensure" that science textbooks it approves for use in public schools "include acknowledgment that human life was created by one God of the universe."

I need to catch that ship to the next universe.
posted by alan on Apr 6, 2000 - 19 comments