Nineteen protesters, including Philadelphia students and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, were arrested in Philadelphia Thursday as they protested the city's school closings plan. The arrests came as the group tried to block members of the city's School Reform Commission from entering a meeting at which the commission approved a plan to
close 23 public schools.
This is school "choice" in Philadelphia. Students have the choice of a substandard online school. They have the choice to leave their neighborhoods to go one of the city's notoriously corrupt charter schools. But now, for many, there's no choice to go to a public school in their neighborhoods.
Go below the fold for more on education, this week's McDonald's walkout, and how companies aren't hiring even for the job openings they have.
A fair day's wage
- Companies have job openings. They just aren't hiring:
The number of job openings has increased to levels not seen since the height of the financial crisis, but vacancies are staying unfilled much longer than they used to — an average of 23 business days today compared to a low of 15 in mid-2009, according to a new measure of Labor Department data by the economists Steven J. Davis, Jason Faberman and John Haltiwanger.
People are being called back for six and seven interviews and a battery of tests unrelated to the jobs they're applying for—at cost not just to the applicants who have to keep going back for more but to the companies wasting their time on excessive interviewing.
- More from Wednesday's walkout by student guest workers at Pennsylvania McDonald's restaurants, via Raging Chicken Press:
- What's next in the Upper Big Branch criminal probe?
- Amazon's labor relations under scrutiny in Germany.
Education
- So here's the irony when New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg does stuff like compare teachers unions to the NRA, claiming that the comparison is that they're both organizations where the leadership is far more militant than the members: In fact, the leadership of the United Federation of Teachers, New York City's teachers union, is being challenged in an upcoming election by these teachers who think the current leadership is being too accommodating to Bloomberg:
- A great look at privatizing Wisconsin's public education system by diarist cheesehead77.
- Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's changes to teacher tenure and evaluations were about as punitive as you would expect from Jindal. But they were struck down by a judge.
- Alabama Republicans used some typically sneaky maneuvers to push through a bill that's sort of a back door to vouchers. But a judge has granted a temporary restraining order because of the underhanded tactics.
- And another win: All the big money that corporate education "reformers" poured into the Los Angeles school board race to defeat incumbent and former teacher Steve Zimmer, and Zimmer won anyway.
State and local