School Controversies

School closures have become a hot-button topic across the country, as parents, students, and community members are rising up to protest such actions by their local governments. States like Illinois and New York have all experienced recent confrontations over this issue, as they have struggled to balance budgets and increase the quality of education to the students in their areas. Do closures of underperforming schools really improve the performance of students in those areas? We’ll take a closer look at two of the districts facing this difficult question, as well as research that may question this method as a means of raising the bar on education standards.

This video reports on proposed school closures in Columbus, Ohio.

Chicago Parents Question Closure Decisions

New Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has faced a serious education crisis since taking his office earlier this year. According to numbers from Catalyst Chicago that were reported in Progress Illinois, 140 of the 675 Chicago Public Schools are eligible to be shut down, based on a three-level metric that rests largely on the Illinois Scholastic Assessment Test results. All of the schools on the list were situated in communities largely populated by minority students, which further complicated the issue.

Parents rose up quickly to form a community organization that provided alternatives to closing down schools in their neighborhoods. The agenda, titled, “A Neighborhood’s Agenda for Schools,” included recommendations like hiring and training

The big yellow school bus that lumbers through residential streets throughout the school year is a sight often taken for granted by parents and students alike. However, those buses may become scarce in the state of New York, if dire predictions about a transportation strike in New York City ring true. A union that represents city school bus drivers has warned of an impending strike if their labor demands are not met in the very near future.

The Dispute Leading Up to Strike Talk

Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union is the group threatening the strike, according to a report at the New York Daily News. The primary point of contention is a demand by the union that pre-kindergarten bus drivers receive seniority-based job protection like other school bus drivers in the city. The union wants these bus drivers to receive protection, even if the current company they work for does not win a new contract. The concern arose when city officials began to talk of collecting bids for a new transportation company when the current company’s contract expires in June of next year.

The president of the drivers’ union, Michael Cordiello, told the Wall Street Journal that if the city did away with senior protections for experienced drivers, the result could be many more unprepared bus drivers on the streets of New York City. He mentioned a charter bus accident in the Bronx that occurred in May, killing 15 people.

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Schools across the country continue to try to do more with less, and budgets are squeezed and classroom sizes begin to bulge. Funding from any source is a welcome relief, and in Utah and California, that help comes from an unlikely source – the gas pump. The Fuel Your School program launched by Chevron in both Utah and California was a big success last year, and this year, the company and the schools involved with the program hope to see the same positive results.

What is Fuel Your School?

Fuel Your School is a program introduced to California and Utah communities by Chevron and DonorsChoose.org. This large company and non-profit organization are teaming up to provide teachers with much-needed supplies for the classroom. The focus of the funding is on STEM learning, so additional money typically goes to help science, technology, engineering, and mathematics-related projects. However, other types of projects are also eligible for funding from this program.

The premise of the program is relatively easy – to raise money for your school, simply fill your gas tank at one of the participating Chevron stations during the month of October. For every eight gallons of gas you purchase, Chevron donates $1 to the school. Last year, the initial launch of Fuel Your School in California raised more than $850,000 for the schools in the California communities, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Helping Schools in California and Utah

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School choice has been an ongoing debate in districts across the country, but one Colorado district has been getting plenty of attention on this subject of late. Douglas County, located in the southern part of the Denver metro area, has unanimously approved a voucher program that provides state funding to parents who want to enroll their children in private schools. The measure was approved by the Douglas County school board in March of this year, but the fight is just beginning over the constitutionality of such a move. We’ll take a look at both sides of this potentially explosive issue to determine whether the use of taxpayer dollars to fund private schooling should be allowed under the law.

The History of the Voucher Program

The “Choice Scholarship” pilot program due to launch in Douglas County during the 2011-2012 school year was the brainchild of Milton and Rose Friedman. These two economists established the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in 1996, with the purpose of advancing an education system based on free choice. This couple firmly believes that the most effective way to raise the bar on the quality of education in this country is to provide free choice to parents and students that promotes healthy competition with the educational framework.

School vouchers are a controversial issue. In this video, NPR Ed correspondent Cory Turner offers a primer on how private school vouchers work and the arguments for and against them.

Many high schools have traditionally included rituals like a benediction or invocation at their graduation ceremonies. While these terms might refer to a variety of things, many believe the words themselves invoke a religious ritual – one that is not allowed to be introduced or endorsed by public schools. The question of prayer during a graduation ceremony has also been a point of controversy for many years at high schools across the country. This year has been no exception, with a Texas public high school graduation coming to the forefront in the latest battle. We will take a look at the issue of prayer during graduation ceremonies, including why some believe that the practice is in direct violation of the constitutional separation of church and state.

What Happened in Texas?

Medina Valley High School in Castroville, Texas, has had a long tradition of including an invocation at the beginning of their graduation ceremonies and a benediction at the end. This year, a student at the school, along with his parents, took issue with the use of terms in the graduation ceremony that some could construe as religious. The family took their case to a district judge, who ruled that Medina was violating the constitution in using such terminology and ordered them to remove the invocation and benediction from the graduation program.

Ayesha Khan, the lawyer for the family, told Reuters, "We think that the district has been flouting the law for decades. We're glad