It’s Not Just Freezing Classrooms in Baltimore. America’s Schools Are Physically Falling Apart.
Matthew Cunningham, 18, a senior at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, talks about the cold temperatures in the school as he leaves for the day.Kim Hairston/Baltimore Sun/ZUMA Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. This week, as the “bomb cyclone” ravaged cities along the East Coast, schools across the northeastern and southern United States were forced to shut down due to…
Republicans Are Trying to Roll Back Rules That Stopped For-Profit Colleges From Exploiting Students
Shane Satterfield is a roofer who owes more than $30,000 in debt for an associate’s degree in computer science from a now-shuttered for-profit collegeDavid Goldman/AP Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. Late Tuesday evening, the House Education and Workforce Committee finalized a sweeping bill that would have far-reaching consequences on how American…
This Is Just How Badly Scott Walker Has Decimated Public Schools in Wisconsin
An anti-Act 10 rally outside the Wisconsin capitol in 2011John Hart/AP In the six years since Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed the union-busting Act 10, which curtailed collective bargaining rights for public employees, the state’s labor movement has been decimated. Wisconsin was once a leader in organized labor, but its share of workers belonging to unions…
Four Million Young People Were Homeless Last Year. Four Million.
In Hollywood, 75% of the homeless population were under the age of 21 in 2014. Joshua Thaisen/ZUMA Nearly 4.2 million kids and young adults without a parent or guardian are homeless across the United States over the course of a year. A new study from the University of Chicago revealed the startling statistic this week, focused specifically on homeless unaccompanied youth between ages…
Black Americans Have Our Own National Anthem. Stand Up and Sing It With Us.
James Weldon Johnson.Mother Jones illustration; National Archives and Records Administration; Jose Luis Magana/AP; Jane Kelly/Getty On a cloudy day in May 2015, several hundred Howard University seniors, myself included, filed into the school’s main quadrangle for commencement, a ceremony that kicked off with “The Star Spangled Banner.” I can’t honestly recall whether my fellow black students…
Voters in this Colorado County Just Sent Betsy DeVos a Helluva Message
On Tuesday night, the longstanding fight over a controversial voucher program in Douglas County, Colorado, appeared to have come to an end. In a local school board election that has found its way into the national debate over voucher programs, four anti-voucher candidates—Chris Schor, Kevin Leung, Anthony Graziano, and Krista Holtzmann—defeated reform-supporting candidates in a landslide. The election…