Alexander Russo

Snow Clean Up Underway As East Coast Tries To Get Back To Normal AP: While New York City schools are open today, D.C. Public Schools remain closed. In Virginia, classes at Fairfax County schools have already been canceled for Tuesday as well. See also WNYC. Detroit Teachers Plan Protest at Court Hearing on Sick-Outs AP: Detroit teachers plan to […]

Screengrab of NYT story on deplorable state of Detroit school buildings. BEST OF THE WEEK Washington Post: Clinton on Detroit schools: ‘No one would tolerate these conditions in a wealthy suburb.’  http://ow.ly/XpBDs Politics K-12: Trump Says We Spend a Ton for Bad Test Scores. Let’s Check the Numbers.  http://ow.ly/XmwjS NYT: Crumbling, Destitute Schools Threaten Detroit’s […]

Slide from the beautifully-rendered Tampa Bay Times look at how one Florida district’s 2007 decision resulted in five neighborhood schools (in orange) becoming racially isolated. Big, big congratulations to the Tampa Bay Times team behind the much-lauded series about Pinellas County schools, “Failure Factories” which just won the Phillip Meyer Award from the prestigious Investigative Reporters […]

Let’s take another look at the ongoing issue of the LA Times taking money from the Broad Foundation and others who are interested in pursuing a specific education agenda in LA and elsewhere. As you may recall, the paper’s initial disclosure about the funding behind it’s much-expanded education team was a bit murky, and there […]

Clinton on Detroit schools: ‘No one would tolerate these conditions in a wealthy suburb.’ Washington Post:  Detroit Public Schools responded to Wednesday’s sickout by taking to the courts to stop further sickouts. The school system filed for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against the Detroit Federation of Teachers and a number of individual teachers. Ivy […]

Gambling is addictive & regressive. I don’t want to support it in any way. I don’t think this is cute. #killjoy https://t.co/u4T82TFiPB — Anya Kamenetz (@anya1anya) January 13, 2016 Last week when the PowerBall lottery got enormous, the head of NPR bought everyone a ticket and told them they had to share the winnings if […]

Most Detroit Public Schools Close Due to Teacher ‘Sick-Outs’ Demanding Better Classroom Conditions AP: A city-wide teacher “sick-out” shut down 88 Detroit schools today, causing 44,790 students to miss class, according to the Detroit Public Schools system. Staff members at the closed schools were expected to report to work or take a leave day, the announcement said. […]

Concerns about insufficient numbers of speakers and panelists of color at conferences, the need to talk more directly about racism, newsroom diversity (including diversifying sources) and “handing over the microphone” in general have been big issues this past year in education circles, media newsrooms, and the broader society: I wrote about the BLM-education connection in Scholastic earlier […]

Most of Detroit’s Public Schools Close Amid Teacher Sick-Out AP: Most of Detroit’s public schools are closed Wednesday due to teacher absences, as disgruntled educators step up efforts to protest the governor’s plans for the district, its ramshackle finances and dilapidated buildings. U.S. Supreme Court to Weigh Obama Deferred-Action Immigration PolicyEdWeek: The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday said […]

Schools in Fauquier, Loudoun and Prince William to open two hours late Washington Post: Public schools in Virginia’s Fauquier, Loudoun and Prince William counties will open two hours late Tuesday because of the extreme cold forecast for the morning hours, including wind chills as low as the single digits, officials said. Attendance Drops At Maryland High School, […]