There's been some local news stuff here, but I wasn't sure if it was of general interest so I haven't been posting about it. Here's a really cool op-ed she wrote last month. :)
http://www.dailycal.org/article/109510/a_call_to_save_dr._king_s_vision_for_america_in_beA Call to Save Dr. King's Vision for America in Berkeley
Berkeley has always believed in the great democratic principle of universal public education. We created the first voluntary desegregation program of its size in the nation, and we have been engaged in a long and committed struggle to realize Dr. King's vision for a truly democratic and equal America. For the last 40 years, we have stood on the principles of Brown v Board of Education that separate can never be equal and that educational segregation affixes a badge of inferiority to black, Latina/o and other minority students and communities.
Our commitment to integration, diversity and equality has faced repeated right-wing legal challenges. Each time we have dug in, refused to abandon Dr. King's dream, and successfully defended our desegregation plan.
We are now faced with a charter school proposal that asks us to abandon our commitment to integration and to return to Jim Crow segregation, but this time dressed up as "innovation." Instead of working to improve our desegregation efforts to resolve the achievement gap between black, Latina/o students and white students, we are being asked to give up on integration and return to the Booker T. Washington philosophy. The claim that segregated charter schools are the "best" option for addressing the educational needs of black and Latina/o students is a lie. Charter schools are public in name but reliant on the support of private, white philanthropic and corporate interests to survive. This is also the philosophical basis for liberal faculty and administrators at many elite universities, including UC Berkeley, to recruit young minority students to emulate Booker T. Washington and start their own charter schools.
Creating a charter system of privately controlled, publicly and privately funded schools, supplemented by a safety net of under-resourced public schools, will make public education subject to the laws of the market economy: completely unequal its outcomes, highly stratified by socio-economic, race and immigration status. It will eliminate all the due process, civil rights, First Amendment and labor protections for teachers, students and parents that are currently incorporated into the public school rubric.
The most vulnerable students: black, Latina/o, immigrant, and poor students of all races who are cynically being presented by charter advocates as the "driving" concern of their movement, will face intensified segregation, isolation, and inequality if the charter scheme is adopted. The families of these students will lose any democratic or regulatory control over the schools their daughters and sons are pressed to attend. In the name of solving the "achievement gap," charters exacerbate it.
Danny Weil has a nice long write-up on Daily Censored:
http://dailycensored.com/2010/06/05/yvette-felarca-must-replace-the-current-american-federation-of-teachers-aft-president-randi-weingarten/I'm really excited by this!
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