Portside

The survey, Voices from the Classroom, was taken by a sample of about 2,000 teachers across the state in May and June. The survey revealed concerns from teachers about the public not understanding how education has changed. More than one in three teachers said they don't have enough money to do what's necessary in the classroom.

Never in U.S. history has a local school board - or any other board, appointed or elected - chosen to close 49 public schools. School closings are part and parcel of a strategy for remaking the American metropolis and will further cement economic inequality. "Today is a day of mourning for the children of Chicago. Their education has been hijacked by an unrepresentative, unelected corporate school board. Closing schools is not an education plan."

Reader's Comments - Assata Shakur, Israel, Korea, Thoreau's Radicalism, Thoreau's Plea for John Brown, Cuba, Benghazi, Spanish town solves unemployment, Viet Nam, more. Announcements - Conference on the Veterans' Peace Movement - New York - May 18; Greek American Radicals - screening - New York - May 25; Radical Teacher on line; Symphony for Palestine; The Future of the Left - Conversation on Socialist Unity - New York - June 5; NY Times full page ad to close Guantanamo

Teachers at one of Chicago's largest charter- school networks - run by the United Neighborhood Organization - have voted to organize into a union. Public school teacher, responds to question - what is behind charter schools. Idea of a motivated community of adults - parents, teachers, administrators - creating a unique school from the ground up, designed to serve that particular community - are not charter schools. AFT calls for moratorium on Common Core testing.

Here come the contract demands that the Philadelphia School District would like to cram down the throat of the city's unionized school teachers. The so-called City of Brotherly Love is on the brink of setting a new standard in squeezing middle- class workers to death. It's not like we haven't seen this story before: Working men and women asked to take a sizable pay cut...and work longer hours...and pay more for shrinking benefits.