The Horace Mann League of the USA
 
Greetings! 
Welcome to the August 13--20, 2012, email of recent additions to the Horace Mann League Blog. The first two articles contain comics that are interactive. Hope you have a great week.

This blog is a service and supported by dues of the members of the Horace Mann League.  Your comments and suggestions are always appreciated. To become a member of the HML, click here to download an application.

Jack McKay, Executive Director, The Horace Mann League of the USA.
Some of the recent postings on the HML Blog for August 20, 2012.
Click on the title to read the complete article.

This week's postings:
 
By Adam Bessie and Dan Archer, Truthout | Comics Series 
"Education is the civil rights issue of our generation," presidential hopeful Mitt Romney announced in a recent press conference, where he also claimed that our public schools are in a state of "national emergency." 

  

Murky Waters: The Education Debate in New Orleans (Part 2 of 3)  By Adam Bessie and Dan Archer, Truthout | Comics Series
The current movement to reform our schools forwards a neoconservative economic agenda, one that strives to dramatically reduce the government's role in schooling and ultimately turn schools over to private enterprise. 
 
Comics Journalism Takes on Education Reformby Doré Ripley, Graphic Novel Reporter
We hear it on the television news, radio talk shows, and the internet: America's public education system is failing. At least that's what the media wants you to believe.
 
Teachers Inject Their Own Message Into Union-Busters' Twitter Campaign   By Adam Bessie, The Daily Censored 
Call it the Gates Paradox - the power of your voice in the "education reform" debate is proportional to the distance from the classroom, multiplied by the amount of money you earn.  Needless to say, public school teachers - especially veterans - score very low on this test.

  

By Joseph Naoli - Truthout 
If we accept the assumption that we think inside a personally determined box which is itself inside a "Let Markets Rule" larger box, we need to acknowledge that such a state of affairs has much affected conditions "here on the ground." I mean that what we think comprises a "good education" has already been affected by market values. 

 

By Sam Dillon 
They described themselves simply as local teachers who favored school reform - one sympathetic state representative, Mary Ann Sullivan, said, "They seemed like genuine, real people versus the teachers' union lobbyists." They were, but they were also recruits in a national organization, Teach Plus, financed significantly by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
 

In evaluating some of the statistical studies that seek to compare charter vs. public school performance, recent investigations conducted by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University reveal that students' test scores may prove that public schools are now outperforming charter schools.  


 

All of the above articles plus more, click here.

 

 

 

 

About Us
The Horace Mann League of the USA is an honorary society that promotes the ideals of Horace Mann by advocating for public education as the cornerstone of our democracy.
 
Officers:
President: Mark Edwards, Supt., Mooresville Graded Schools, NC
President-elect: Joe Hairston, (ret.) Supt., Baltimore County Public Schools, MD
Vice President: Gary Marx, President, Center for Public Outreach, VA
Past President: Julie Underwood, Dean, Sch. of Ed. U. of WI, Madison
2nd Past Pres: George Garcia, (ret.) Supt., Boulder Valley Schools, CO
3rd Past Pres: Steve Rasmussen, Supt., Issaquah School District, WA
 
Directors:
Martha Bruckner, Supt., Council Bluffs Community Schools, IA
Evelyn Blose-Holman, (ret.) Superintendent, Bay Shore Schools, NY
Carol Choye, Instructor, Bank Street College, NY
Brent Clark, Exec. Dir., Illinois Assoc. of School Admin. IL
Linda Darling Hammond, Professor of Education, Stanford U. CA
Nancy DeFord, Supt. (Ret.) Park City Schools, UT
Charles Fowler, Exec. Dir., Suburban School Superintendents, NH
James Harvey, Exec. Dir., Superintendents Roundtable, WA
William Hite, Supt., Philadelphia City Schools, PA
Dwight Jones, Supt., Clark County Schools, NV
Eric King, Supt., (Ret.) Muncie Public Schools, IN
Barry Lynn, Exec. Dir., Americans United, Washington, DC
Stan Olson, Supt. (Ret.) Boise Public Schools, ID
Douglas Otto, Assoc.Prof.,Ed. Ad., University of North Texas, TX
 
Executive Director:
Jack McKay, Professor, (Ret.) University of Nebraska at Omaha, 
560 Rainier Lane, Port Ludlow, WA 98365 (360) 821 9877
 HML Blog Posts through August 5, 2012
The 304 postings are listed in alphabetical order by author.