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K-12
ACLU Supports DOJ Guidance On Discipline Gaps Such As The One In The Ann Arbor Public Schools
THE DISCIPLINE GAP. Put simply, the term describes the gap between the number of minority students (primarily Black and Hispanic) and white students who are formally disciplined and/or expelled from the public schools they attend. Data from…
Deliverance: The Core is Rotten
by Warren Liverance
LATELY, BOTH LIBERAL and conservative blogospheres are abuzz with discussion of the “The Common Core.” It seems that for once, the majority of both sides oppose something that would be bad for the country. Since this…
EDITORIAL: AAPS Targets Hunger
IN A RECENT issue of The Ann Arbor Independent, the newspaper published an article which identified a cluster of Ann Arbor elementary schools at which fewer than 10 percent of the fifth grade students have scored “Advanced” on the MEAP in…
Keeping Tabs—Locals To Watch In 2014: Dr. Jeanice Kerr Swift
Listening her way across the city. Budgeting her way to perdition.
Dr. Jeanice K. Swift was not the Ann Arbor Board of Education’s first choice to lead the Ann Arbor Public Schools. The search for Dr. Patricia Green’s replacement began…
MEAP Data Reveal That 5th Graders At One-Third Of Ann Arbor Schools Perform At Levels Consistent With Schools In Nation’s Poorest Inner-City Districts
ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT SHOULDN’T be predicated on which of Ann Arbor’s 21 public elementary schools a child attends. The AAPS elementary curriculum is standardized throughout the District, and teachers are uniformly compensated, qualified,…
Study Reveals Number Of K-8 Students Walking And Biking To School Rose Between 2007 and 2012
THE NATIONAL CENTER for Safe Routes to School released the results of a study that concluded more K-8 students are walking and biking to school. The 43 page study, titled “Trends in Walking and Bicycling to School from 2007 to 2012” was…
Ann Arbor Educational Foundation Funds Grants, Pulls Back From Funding After School Buses
THE SUPERINTENDENT OF the Ann Arbor Public Schools, Dr. Jeanice Kerr Swift considers “both organizations, the AAPSEF and the PTO Thrift Shop as tremendous partners in our work on behalf of Ann Arbor children.” Mary Cooperwasser, a former…
Deliverance: Charter Schools, Political Payback & Union Busting
by Warren Liverance
OUR LEGISLATURE AND governor set their sights on the reform of the public education system. According to a Free Press article “more than 50 percent of high schools have fewer than 10 percent of their students…
GOP Leaders Teach That Educators Are Costly Parasites. Are Americans Really Uneducated Enough To Believe It?
by Chris Savage
TO SAY THAT Republicans are on a mission to destroy unions in this country is not an understatement. Across the country, and particularly in the Midwest, Republican legislators and governors have spent the past three…
A2Politico: The New Jim Crow
by P.D. Lesko
MY TWO SONS have been, at various times, advanced in social studies, reading, mathematics and science, according to their scores on the MEAP tests. During the past two years, their overall proficiency scores dropped…