Devastating Education Cuts Leave Trail of Consequences Across Pennsylvania

By Kevin Hart When cuts are deep enough, they can leave ugly scars. That’s the lesson being learned across Pennsylvania this year, as some of the state’s poorest districts try to cope with $860 million in funding cuts advanced by Governor Tom Corbett – cuts educators say are causing serious and permanent harm to the [...]

Union Educators’ Heroism Spotlighted on The Ellen Show

By Kevin Hart The heroism of union educators in Pennsylvania’s Chester Upland School District was beamed into millions of homes yesterday, as Columbus Elementary School teacher Sara Ferguson appeared on the nationally broadcast The Ellen Show to discuss the district’s plight. “Every child deserves the right to attend a great public school, and they need [...]

NEA President: Leaving Chester Upland Students in Limbo a “Dereliction of Duty”

By Kevin Hart The students of the Chester Upland School District, one of the poorest districts in Pennsylvania, deserve the security of knowing that their schools will have the funding to remain open for the entire school year. That was the message delivered by National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel after a $3.2 million [...]

Educators Will Work Without Paychecks to Keep Broke District From Failing

By Kevin Hart When Bonita Davis’ husband passed away in August, she faced the same fears and anxieties that would grip any new single parent. The bills didn’t stop coming. She wondered how she would continue supporting her two children in college. And Davis, a sixth-grade teacher in the Chester Upland School District in Chester, [...]

Pennsylvania Schools Stand Up to Bullying

By Kevin Hart If educators could wave a magic wand and solve one problem affecting American schools, bullying would be high on the list. Teachers, support professionals and administrators are acutely aware that bullying can take a devastating emotional and academic toll on students – in fact, an estimated 160,000 students miss school each day [...]

Duncan Talks NCLB, Collective Bargaining Rights in Twitter Town Hall

By Kevin Hart Summarizing complex education policy in 140 characters is no easy task. But U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan gave it a shot on Wednesday, hosting a Twitter town hall that covered issues ranging from fixing the controversial No Child Left Behind Act to the role collective bargaining can play in boosting student achievement. [...]

Why Teaching Experience Matters

By Kevin Hart Decades before he became the 2005-2006 New York State Teacher of the Year and was heralded as one of the nation’s leading educators, Stephen Bongiovi almost became something far less glamorous – fired. The retired English teacher from Long Island was reviewing his personnel files as part of the teacher of the [...]

Educators Get Social to Protect Public Education, Workers’ Rights

By Kevin Hart As musician and poet Gil Scott-Heron famously promised, the revolution will not be televised – but it’s definitely being tweeted. A recent rash of legislation seeking to gut workers’ rights and public education has driven hundreds of thousands of public employees and their supporters to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, [...]

Counselors Often Hidden Heroes in America’s Schools

By Kevin Hart They offer shoulders to cry on. They provide academic coaching to some of our most vulnerable students. They work diligently to promote students’ academic and emotional well-being – and, increasingly, they’re an endangered species. School counselors may do much of their work behind the scenes, but numerous studies have shown that strong [...]

States Move to Address Lack of Charter Oversight, Accountability

By Kevin Hart Charter schools are marketed to the public under a very simple premise – if they don’t perform, they can be closed. But the reality has been very different, and some states are now looking for ways to hold taxpayer-funded charter schools more accountable for how they perform and how they recruit students. [...]

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