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In this weeks' program we look at the attempt by education reformers to impose value added measures on teacher evaluation as an example of how neoliberal forces have used the economic crisis to blackmail schools into practices that do not serve teaching and learning, but do serve the corporate profiteers as they work to privatize public education and limit the goals of education to vocational training for corporate hegemony. These processes constrict possibilities for educational experiences that are critical, relational and transformative. We see that in naming these processes and taking risks both individually and collectively we can begin to speak back to and overcome these forces. In this program we speak with Sean Feeney, principal from Long Island New York, about the stance he and other principals have taken against the imposition of value added measures in the new Annual Professional Performance Review in New York State. We also speak with Celia Oyler, professor of...

In this edition of Education Radio, we report on world-wide student  resistance to the attacks on public higher education, along with the story of neoliberalism as it threatens the future of public higher education in  the U.S.  Emerging from the Occupy movement, advocates calling for a  student debt strike that includes the vision of free college tuition  will present their case. The first part of the show, features reports from Puerto Rico, the UK,  and Chile, where sustained, mass mobilizations of youth have sought to  halt enormous tuition hikes. We next hear from labor activist and UMass academic Max Page, co-author  The Future of Higher Education, who deconstructs the mechanics of a  corporate-governance, privatization mentality that is squeezing the  quality of and access to public higher education. For the last part of the hour, speakers from Zuccotti Park, including  Anya Kamentz, Pamela Brown, and Andrew Ross, li...

In this weeks show, we bring you interviews with four activists educators who are working within their communities and unions, local and national, to actively speak back to and resist the neoliberal structures and paradigms being imposed on us. Their stories remind us of the necessity and power of organizing and of finding courage in solidarity. The assault on public education is multi-faceted and strategic. Here on Education Radio we have explored the ways that politicians, corporations and individual financiers manipulate the discourse, bully educators, intensify the disempowerment of low-income communities, and purchase access with the goals of privatizing education and feeding their profits from the public trough. The forces of neoliberalism, which aim to privatize and commodify every aspect of our lives, are powerful and organized.  For those of us who see education as a place for the building of a democratic and just society, for transformation and human freedom, understandi...