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Saturday, June 16, 2012

The Gates Foundation, a smart ALEC and more charter school abuses | Seattle Education

The Gates Foundation, a smart ALEC and more charter school abuses | Seattle Education:


The Gates Foundation, a smart ALEC and more charter school abuses

There was so much to report this week that I decided to break down the update into two parts.
So on to Weekly Update, Part 2:
 As I stated in a previous post, there was an Innovation Schools bill that passed through Olympia this year and was heralded by both sides of the aisle as a step forward in school innovation and was also seen as a way to sidestep the issue of charter schools.
What many did not realize is that what was passed was legislation written by ALEC. We didn’t get “charter schools” but we got the next best thing as far as members of ALEC were concerned.
This bill disconnects teachers working in Innovation Schools from the coverage of their unions and there is to be no oversight by a democratically elected local school board. As we have learned from Wall Street, the last thing that these privatizers want is oversight or regulation of any sort. That is why public school boards are not part of