Charter schools worse than public schools

David Sirota reports in Charter schools: No silver bullet: In recent years, major studies suggest that, on the whole, charter schools are producing worse educational achievement results than traditional public schools. For example, a landmark study from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes discovered that while 17 percent of charter schools “provide superior…

Tonight : Vigil/Speakout Against Afghanistan Massacre, 5:30PM at Westlake Plaza in Seattle

Image from event (added evening of 2012/03/21) Tonight: Wednesday March 21 Speakout/Vigil @ 5:30pm Westlake Plaza ( 4th and Pine in downtown Seattle) Speakers: Joshua Simpson (Iraq war veteran and one of the founders of Coffee Strong), Ashley J Hagemann (Her husband committed suicide after receiving orders for a 9th deployment overseas), and Tim Bedwell…

Draft Kucinich movement starts in Washington State

There’s a movement underway to recruit Dennis Kucinich to run for Congress in Washington State. On March 6, Kucinich lost a primary battle for his redistricted and gerrymandered Ohio congressional district.  (See here , here and here.)  His loss generated national coverage with commentators lamenting the “end of an era.” Last summer and autumn Kucinich…

Speaker Frank Chopp's comments on the budget at Mercer Island Library

Washington State House Speaker Frank Chopp spoke and answered questions at Mercer Island Library Sunday afternoon, at the King County Democrats’ Legislative Action Committee meeting. Chopp mostly covered the negotiations about the state budget. About two weeks ago Senate Republicans pulled a surprise maneuver and passed a regressive budget, with the help of three turncoat…

Build a new model?

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” — Buckminister Fuller But taken to extremes, such thinking would lead to frequent divorce, destruction, and abandonment of institutions and plans.   Sometimes you do need to fix what’s broken instead of replacing it…

Bigotry is bigotry is bigotry

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Bigotry-is-Bigotry-is-Bigo-by-Gregory-Paul-120315-139.html “For black Christians to cite the Bible as justifying their homophobia is about as theologically logical and as ethically vile as white Christians citing the same volume’s support of slavery to warrant their discrimination against blacks .”