Walking out of work: National Adjunct Walkout Day

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© Manuel Carmona – Fotolia.com

Adjunct teaching horror stories started circulating after the death of Margaret Mary Votjko in 2013. She died at age 83, alone, sick, penniless, almost homeless, after being let go from her 25-year job teaching French at Duquesne University. Daniel Kovalik’s moving column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette explained that for years, “Margaret Mary worked on a contract basis from semester to semester, with no job security, no benefits and with a salary of between $3,000 and just over $3,500 per three-credit course.”

Wednesday, February 25 is National Adjunct Walkout Day, a day organized to draw attention to adjunct professors and to efforts to unionize and gain better wages and working conditions. Equity for adjuncts is an urgent issue, for faculty and students alike.  Continue reading →

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Kids pay the price: Turning foster care into a billion dollar business

Screen Shot 2015-02-23 at 9.19.16 AMThe Facebook post linked to charges of “deaths, sex abuse, and blunders in screening, training, and overseeing foster parents at the nation’s largest for-profit foster care company.” My first reaction was disbelief: a for-profit foster care company? I remember my own days as a foster parent of teenagers, and the financial and emotional challenges of caring for them. How could a company make money on foster care? And why would anyone think it’s a good idea to place kids with a company whose purpose is to make money from them? Continue reading →

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No change, no hope, says Texas judge — but he doesn’t have the final word on immigration

© dule964 - Fotolia.com gavel

© dule964 – Fotolia.com gavel

On February 17, Texas federal district court judge Andrew Hanen issued a preliminary injunction to stop immigration changes. That’s an order saying the government may not proceed with expanded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Legal Permanent Residents (DAPA). The order is one of the very early steps in the lawsuit against the federal government by 26 states. These states want to overturn President Obama’s executive orders on immigration. Continue reading →

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Minnesota’s endangered state butterfly: Millions of Monarchs gone

Minnesota’s state butterfly, the dazzling orange-and-black Monarch, is a treasure that we share with the world during its multi-generation migration between Minnesota and Mexico. Now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service warns that, “Unless we act now to help the Monarch, this amazing animal could disappear in our lifetime.” According to the Washington Post, “what’s happening to monarch butterflies is nothing short of a massacre.” The Center for Biological Diversity is petitioning for endangered species protection for the monarch, citing a 90 percent decline in the population over the past 20 years. Continue reading →

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Why you should read Bluestem Prairie

Photo by Justin Meissen, published under Creative Commons license.

Photo by Justin Meissen, published under Creative Commons license.

Sally Jo Sorensen calls out all kind of nonsense in her Bluestem Prairie blog, especially in the legislature, and especially on rural issues. As Republicans flex their new majority muscle in the MN legislature, one of their first targets is the Citizen Advisory Board of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. Sally Jo skewers this vendetta, which is triggered by the one-and-only decision to require a mega-farm to produce an Environmental Impact Statement as part of the permit process. Continue reading →

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How is preschool for all like a snowball fight?

Photo by D. Sharon Pruitt, published under Creative Commons license

Photo by D. Sharon Pruitt, published under Creative Commons license

What if success at school was like a snowball fight? The kids with thin, raggedy mittens or no mittens at all are at a distinct disadvantage. They’ll be much better able to compete on an equal basis if they have good mittens, so let’s give all kids the same warm, water-repellent mittens. Continue reading →

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Free community college tuition: right or wrong for 21st century?

Screen Shot 2015-02-07 at 9.52.44 AMMy latest post on Al Jazeera:

President Barack Obama’s proposal to make community college free for all students sounded like a great way to extend free public education beyond high school, giving low-income students a path to college. Critics say the plan could further ghettoize lower income and black high school graduates and spends public money on students who can afford their tuition. …

Published in Al Jazeera – click here to read full article.

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Speak for the children: Children’s Defense Fund, Parents United for Public Schools, Parent Aware

Children's Defense Fund Twitter photo

Children’s Defense Fund Twitter photo

For generations, the Children’s Defense Fund has been a national voice for children. Growing out of the civil rights movement, CDF has been led by Marian Wright Edelman, a civil rights activist and the first Black woman licensed to practice law in Mississippi. CDF’s just-released report, Ending Child Poverty Now, denounces the “national moral disgrace that there are 14.7 million poor children and 6.5 million extremely poor children in the United States of America – the world’s largest economy,” and describes a blueprint for reducing child poverty by 60 percent. Continue reading →

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Not there yet: Five ways MN preschool programs fall short

Photo by Barnaby Wasson, published under Creative Commons license - https://www.flickr.com/photos/barnabywasson/279911701/in/set-72157594345855838

Photo by Barnaby Wasson, published under Creative Commons license – https://www.flickr.com/photos/barnabywasson/279911701/in/set-72157594345855838

As Minnesotans congratulate ourselves on paying more attention to preschool, we need to face painful facts. We know a lot about what works to get children a fair start in school, and we are still far from providing or funding that fair start for poor children. Continue reading →

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Weaponizing Facebook

FB with gun

Want to shut down a news site? Facebook will help. A new Facebook “hoax button” lets anyone flag any news article posted on Facebook as false. The mechanism is the same as flagging a post as “annoying or distasteful” or pornography. Just click, and you’re done. Continue reading →

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