Could more vocational programming save public schools?

How do you bring focus to students in a system where their education is complicated by budget shortfalls, labor disputes and violent crime in their surrounding neighborhoods? Asks the Huffington Post. How do you connect the prospect of high school graduation to career success for students who’ve seen unemployment hit staggering highs? Jean-Claude Brizard wants to teach them a trade. Before he became the Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago Public Schools system, Brizard was the principal of George Westinghouse High School, a vocational school in Brooklyn, New York that turned out rappers like Lil Kim, Jay-Z and Biggie Smalls, but many of the students did not meet state academic requirements…

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RheeFirst, Michelle Rhee attack site, defended by teachers union

In the eyes of Steven Brill, the American Federation of Teachers building a website attacking Michelle Rhee and masking its origins is worse than Rhee’s creating a billion-dollar organization aimed at revamping education that doesn’t disclose its backers, reports the Huffington Post. Brill, author of the recent Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools, came to the education beat after writing a piece for the New Yorker about the “Rubber Room,” a place where New York City public school teachers were paid to stay out of classrooms…

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Opinion: Teachers get little say in a book about them

Can an education reform movement that demeans and trivializes teachers succeed? It’s hard to imagine, but that is what is going on in parts of America today, the New York Times reports. In Steven Brill’s new book celebrating the movement, “Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools,” teachers are literally the least of it. Of the three million who work in traditional public schools, three are interviewed by Mr. Brill on the record; their insights take up six of the book’s 437 pages. Nor do charter school teachers fare much better…

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