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Hezbollah's Rise, Israel's Fall |
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Today's Stories August 30, 2006 Eliza Ernshire
Saul Landau Jeffrey Buchanan Dave Lindorff James Brooks John F. Burnett Walter A. Davis Rich Gibson Amira Hass Paul Craig
Roberts
August 28, 2006 John Walsh Sibel Edmonds
/ William Weaver Ramzy Kysia Ron Jacobs Gideon Levy Missy Beattie Virginia Tilley
Uri Avnery Alexander Cockburn Jordan Green Azmi Bishara Ray Close Gary Leupp Ralph Nader Joe Allen Fred Gardner Dave Lindorff David Krieger Stephen Fleischman Mary Turck Walter Brasch Jim Scharplaz Israel Shamir Alexander Cockburn Charles Henderson Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement
August 25, 2006 Elena Everett Juan Cole Chris Moore James Marc Leas Salah Obeid Claudio Albertani Tom Barry Website of
the Day
CounterPunch
News Service Uri Avnery Nermeen al-Mufti Norman Solomon Megan Wiles Laura Santina Mike Whitney Seth Sandronsky Christopher
Brauchli
August 23, 2006 Dr. Trudy Bond Ramzy Baroud Ron Jacobs Heather Gray Amira Hass Mavis Anderson Ingmar Lee Francis Boyle John Ross
Gilad Atzmon Jack Heyman Eamon McCann Sharon Smith Edward S. Herman Ramzi Kysia Bill Quigley August 21, 2006 Jonathan Cook Paul Craig
Roberts Kathy Kelly Mike Roselle Lenni Brenner Maher Osseiran
August 19 /
20, 2006 Uri Avnery Eliza Ernshire Virginia Tilley Kathy Kelly Marc Levy Stephen Bradberry / Barbara Rose
Johnston William Blum Stephen Fleischman Ralph Nader Dave Lindorff Fred Gardner David Krieger Dan La Botz Poets' Basement
August 18, 2006 Brian M. Downing John Blair Alan Hart Craig Murray Chris Dols Emily Kirksey Joaquín Bustelo William S.
Lind Podcast of the Day Website of
the Day
August 17, 2006 CounterPunch
News Service Barucha Peller Ramzy Baroud Rothem Shtarkman Craig Murray Samar Assad Mike Ferner Arnold Kohen Kevin Zeese Missy Comley Beattie Uri Avnery Video of the Day Website of
the Day
August 16, 2006 Merav Yudilovitch Robert Fisk Mark Williams John Ross Christopher
Brauchli John Walsh Ron Jacobs Rachard Itani Felice Pace Niranjan Ramakrishnan Frank, Sharma
and Peterson Jonathan Cook Website of
the Day
August 15, 2006 Andrew Ford
Lyons Binoy Kampmark Robert Fisk Ralph Nader Todd Chretien Chris Floyd Mark Engler George Galloway Laray Polk Trish Schuh Website of the Day
Uri Avnery Karim Makdisi Kathy Kelly Robert Fisk Norman Solomon Sunsara Taylor Robert Jensen Mike Whitney P. Sainath Goretti Horgan Christopher
Reed
August 12 /
13, 2006 Jean Bricmont Norman Finkelstein Robert Fisk Adrian Grima Barucha Peller Omar Barghouti Adam Engel Conn Hallinan John Stauber Rev. William
Alberts Fred Gardner Lucinda Marshall Ron Jacobs CounterPunch
News Service Poets' Basement
Col. Dan Smith John Ross Michael Donnelly William S.
Lind Linda Milazzo Rep. Cynthia
McKinney Azmi Bishara Henri Picciotto CounterPunch News Wire Dave Lindorff Jonathan Cook
Uri Avnery Dave Marsh Gabriel Kolko Arthur Versluis Jennifer Loewenstein
Linda Schade Jackie Mason Jonathan Cook Gilad Atzmon
Charles Hirschkind
Tom Barry Cockburn &
St. Clair
August 8, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Paul Larudee Joan Roelofs Dimi Reider John A. Murphy Tim Llewellyn Website of the Day
August 7, 2006 Uri Avnery Karim Makdisi Nadia Hijab Sharon Smith Magan Wiles George Beres Rachard Itani Norman Solomon Stan Cox Mickey Z. Jonathan Cook Website of
the Day
August 5 / 6, 2006 Virginia Tilley Uri Avnery Patrick Cockburn Sgt. Martin Smith Gary Leupp Neve Gordon Ralph Nader Peter Bouckaert Peter Montague David Krieger Michael Donnelly Fred Gardner Catherine Norris Imraan Siddiqi Missy Comley
Beattie Ira Kay Dave Lindorff Pratyush Chandra Ron Jacobs St. Clair / Donnelly Poets' Basement Website of the Day Video of the
Weekend
August 4, 2006 Ralph Nader Brian Cloughley Eliza Ernshire Roger Assaf George Bisharat Remi Kanazi Laura Carlsen Niranjan Ramakrishnan Derrick O'Keefe Mickey Z. Col. Dan Smith Website of the Day
Jonathan Cook Uri Avnery Saree Makdisi Robert Fisk Farrah Hassen Nicola Nasser Ron Jacobs Mitchel Cohen Seth Sandronsky Bruce K. Gagnon Alexander Cockburn
John Ross Chip Mitchell Saul Landau Naseer Aruri Winslow T.
Wheeler Matthias Gebauer Joshua Frank Bill Quigley Manuel Yang Shamai Leibowitz David Himmelstein Lara Marlowe Website of
the Day
August 1, 2006 Michael Neumann Robert Fisk Omar Barghouti Marc Levy Diana Barahona / Jeb Sprague Claud Cockburn Ross Eisenbrey Dave Lindorff John Chuckman Francis Boyle Phil Doe Stephen Soldz Website of the Day
July 31, 2006 Jonathan Cook Uri Avnery Robert Fisk Amina Mire Marjorie Cohn Sibel Edmonds / William Weaver John Ross Stanley Rogouski Gideon Levy Ron Jacobs James Ridgeway
/ Alicia Ng Brian Tokar Alexander Cockburn
July 29 / 30,
2006 Michael Neuman Vijay Prashad Ramzi Kysia Werther Robert Fisk Patrick Cockburn Ralph Nader Rachard Itani Eduardo Galeano Gary Leupp Eve Poretsky John Chuckman Fred Gardner Juan Santos Punyapriya Dasgupta Liaquat Ali
Khan Israel Shamir William A.
Cook Stanley Heller Dave Lindorff Moshe Adler Susie Day Pat Williams Anthony Papa John V. Whitbeck Jackie Corr Myles Palmer Tom D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
July 28, 2006 Jonathan Cook Uri Avnery Renee Bowyer Robert Fisk Patrick Cockburn Ramzy Baroud Don Fitz Elaine Cassel David Price Mike Whitney Mickey Z. Niranjan Ramakrishnan Charles Glass Website of
the Day
July 27, 2006 Tanya Reinhart Saul Landau Ramzi Kysia Tom Barry Joseph Grosso Sharon Smith Gale Courey
Toensing Christopher Reed Werther Yusuf Mansur Richard Harth Website of the Day
Norman
Solomon Barbara
Olshanksy David
Nally Jonathan
Cook Patrick
Cockburn William
Blum Joshua
Frank Gabriel
Kolko Daniel
Cassidy Michael
Dickinson Robert
Fisk Uri
Avnery Website
of the Day
July 25, 2006 Harry
Browne Marjorie
Cohn Robert
Bryce Sharat
G. Lin George
Bisharat CounterPunch
News Desk Zena
El-Khalil Larry
Lack Mike
Mejia Ashraf
Isma'il Website
of the Day
July 24, 2006 Mark
Levy Robert
Fisk Maher
Osseiran Paul
Craig Roberts Patrick
Cockburn Website
of the Day
July 22-23, 2006 Jonathan
Cook Paul
Craig Roberts Gilad
Atzmon Robert
Fisk Ralph
Nader Fred
Gardner Christopher
Reed Dr.
Susan Block Najla
Said Uri
Avnery July 21, 2006 George
Galloway P.
Sainath Aseem
Shrivastava Alexander
Cockburn Website
of the Day July 20, 2006 William
S. Lind Robert
Jensen John
Ross Tom
Hayden Paul
Craig Roberts July 19, 2006 Patrick
Cockburn Trish
Schuh Jonathan
Cook Vicente
Navarro
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August 30, 2006 Privatizing New Orleans' SchoolsComing to a City Near YouBy LEIGH DAVIS Vickie White is worried. "They are doing away with public education as we know it," she says. White helped organize a trip to New Orleans this summer for the People's Organization for Progress (POP) Central Jersey. After seeing how public education is being drastically altered there, she said she feared that very system would spread. "The theme I came back with was, 'Coming to a city near you,'" she says. As children line up for school buses on first days of school throughout the country, the management of New Orleans' schools post-Katrina is causing anxiety amongst public education advocates. Others, including the nonpartisan Urban Institute, and former Housing and Urban Development secretary Henry Cisneros (now chair of City-View, a private venture dedicated to urban housing development) are looking to the Crescent City as a model for the future of American education. In June, POP Central Jersey and Newark's House of Prayer Episcopal Church sponsored the 21st-Century Freedom Ride: New Jersey to New Orleans. The trip flew twenty-five people, a dozen of them high school students, to New Orleans to find out what was really happening there and to volunteer with Common Ground Collective, a grassroots relief organization founded by New Orleans residents shortly after Katrina. Besides helping with the cleanup effort in the Ninth Ward, the group saw what Katrina and government neglect did to the city and its residents -- and what was being done to bring the city back. While in New Orleans, the group attended an education summit hosted by the National Coalition for Quality Schools in New Orleans and the People's Organizing Committee, a group working to help residents return to the city. A Transfer of Power Within days of Katrina, Gov. Kathleen Blanco (D) convened a special meeting of the state legislature to talk about a takeover of the Orleans Parish Public School District, a district with a half-billion dollar budget serving New Orleans, the summit's keynote speaker, Nat LaCour, secretary treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers, told the gathering. "This meeting took place while there were still people on roofs and at the Superdome waiting to be rescued," said White. A few months later, the state legislature passed legislation giving the state control of 107 of New Orleans' 128 public schools, by placing them under the authority of the Recovery School District (RSD). Orleans Parish's public schools have now been divided into three categories: public, charter, and the Recovery School District. A school receives the RSD designation if it is categorized as "failing," in some cases receiving the label only after a change in criteria since the hurricane. RSD schools are then managed by the state, not the local school board, and may be turned over to private foundations or other groups to be run as charter schools. Of the 57 public schools set to operate in New Orleans this school year, more than 30 are charter schools. The Push for Charter Schools Charter schools in Louisiana have received $44.8 million in grant money from the federal government since Hurricane Katrina. The first grant of $20.9 million in Sept. 2005 was for reopening charter schools damaged during the hurricane, expanding existing charter schools to accommodate displaced students, and creating 10 new charter schools. The second and larger grant, awarded this June, is a three-year grant to design and create new charter schools. "Charter schools are empowering parents with new options in public education," U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said in a press release announcing the latest grants to Louisiana. But what is empowering about enrolling children in schools that Spellings' own Department has admitted aren't working? "The evidence on charter schools is that they are less likely than public schools to meet state education goals," Lisa Delpit, executive director of the Center for Urban Education & Innovation, told the New Orleans education summit. Delpit, who has studied the implementation of charter schools throughout the country, was citing a 2005 report issued by the U.S. Department of Education. Through case studies in Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Texas, the report found that charter schools are lagging behind public schools in meeting performance standards. The report also noted that charter schools are "less likely than traditional public schools to employ teachers meeting state certification standards." Further, because charter schools may be selective, students must apply to get in. Students can be rejected if they have not taken certain courses required by the state or haven't kept up their grades. One New Orleans student told the New Jersey group he couldn't get into his neighborhood public school upon his return to the city, because the grades he earned while living in another state after the hurricane were "not good enough." "The charter school system creates competition among students," said Ellen Whitt of New Brunswick, a school librarian who went on the trip to New Orleans as a chaperone. "And there is very little oversight to prevent abuse, discrimination and segregation based on race and class." The Schools--And the Teachers--Aren't the Same Most students have been able to return to school, but it's not like school was before the hurricane. Kara, a middle school student, told the summit that her "night school" classes, which went until 9 pm, had been "a blessing." But she worried about the loss of after-school activities. "More things should be open for young people like me because there are so many things out there that could be negative and not enough positive things for young people to do," she said. "Somebody, like the president, should care more about the young people down here." Evidence suggests that the state and school board may also be using the opportunity presented by the hurricane to bust the teachers' union. When the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) lost control of 102 schools mere weeks after Katrina, 7,500 school personnel -- many of them veteran teachers of 20-plus years -- were placed on "disaster leave" without pay. The state then refused to recognize the teachers' contract, instead instructing teachers to reapply as new employees. In early August, OPSB employees filed suit in Orleans Parish Civil District Court, claiming that they were deprived of "constitutional rights to property [their jobs], due process, and equal protection" as guaranteed by the state's constitution. While State Superintendent Cecil J. Picard stated that Louisiana would solicit federal funds to "make each public school employee whole," no funds or additional information have been received. Instead, the OPSB employees say that the state "kicked them while they were down." Despite the fact that the majority of teachers and 90 percent of the student population in pre-Katrina New Orleans were black, only about a quarter of the staff of the Recovery School District is black, according to Lance Hill, Executive Director for the Southern Institute for Education and Research at Tulane University. Back to School? More than 40 private and parochial schools were back in session within a few months of the hurricane. Yet only eight public schools run by the local school board reopened during the 2005-06 school year. Katrina survivors living in a FEMA trailer park near Baker, La., had no school available to their children during the 2005-06 school year, even though there were teachers living there. The Recovery School District predicts 30,000 students returning to New Orleans by January 2007 -- most to the poorest black neighborhoods. But as of early August, the RSD staff was composed of only 10 employees, and discussion was focused on hiring substitute teachers to fill out school staff by Sept. 7. About 9,000 students had registered in the Recovery School District a month before school was scheduled to open, according to Louisiana's Department of Education. Among the 57 public schools slated to reopen during the 2006-07 school year, the status of 12 schools was unknown, while another 19 were still under repair as of mid-August. As some schools opened their doors in mid-August, confusion reigned. Some families could not register their children in their previous neighborhood schools, as school registration is first-come, first-served, and the schools were already full. Almost 2,000 students who registered online or by phone were told they needed to register in person by Aug. 11 or be dropped from the rolls. Three schools operated by the Treme Charter School Association had their charters rescinded by the state, after the group submitted a very different operating plan than what was originally approved. This forced students from two of the three schools to re-register through the Recovery School District, which took the schools over. The third school will not open at all, leaving its students among the many New Orleans children scrambling to find other educational options. Leigh Davis is a longtime peace and justice activist.
She's been a counselor, an educator, and a writer. This piece
was originally published by New Jersey's progressive newsmagazine,
City Belt at citybelt.org.
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair          Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.                     |
