The Boston Public Schools serve over fifty thousand students between kindergarten and the twelfth grade. The Boston Teachers Union has more than four thousand members. Students, families, and city officials have developed dysfunctional relationships over the years, but most of this is due to overarching, widespread, and systemic corruption. Whether it is reflected in student achievement; attendance issues; damaged and missing books; food that is past the expiration date for consumption in school cafeterias; swelling class sizes; schools in need of repair or upgrades in the physical plant; or teachers, not to mention administrators, who are ineffective, remaining in salaried positions that are protected by the Boston Teachers Union, it is imperative that change for the better take place right away. It is high time that someone in Washington, DC takes notice of this and does something about it for once, besides proposing charter schools that reproduce many of the same problems without solving the original ones. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. We just need better schools. While the global financial crisis has been playing havoc on budgets for education, we need a strong voice in the United States Senate for education. Elizabeth Warren can be that voice.
Why is this important?
Corruption is an ongoing problem that has been having an adverse effect on student achievement in urban schools for many years.
